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SPELLING EFFICIENCY 

IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND 

SEX, AND THE QUESTION 

OF TRANSFER 



Spelling Efficiency in Relation to 

Age, Grade and Sex, and the 

Question of Transfer 



An Experimental and Critical Study of the Function of 
Method in the Teaching of Spelling 



BY 
J. E. WALLACE WALLIN, Ph.D. 

Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Psychology in The 
New Jersey State Village for Epilepti 



tics 



Author of "Researches on the Rhythm of Speech,' 

"Optical Illusions of Reversible 

Perspective," etc. 




BALTIMORE 

WARWICK & YORK, Inc. 

1911 



vfe'^ 



.^'^^ 



Copyright 1911 
BY 
WARWICK & YORK, 



ri 



(g:,CI,A2S0220 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Preface ...... vii 

CHArTER I. 
Introduction ..... 1- 

chapti:r II. 

Spelling Proficiency as Measured bv School and 

Grade Totals ..... 20 

CHAPTER III. 
The Relation of Spelling Efficiency to Sex and Age 49 

CHAPTER IV. 
Does Spelling Efficiency Acquired in Column 

Drills Transfer to Dictated Compositions? . 65 

CHAPTER V. 
The Spelling Drill in Vogue in Cleveland as 
Viewed by Principals and Teachers in the 
Elementary Schools . . . .77 

CHAPTER VI. 

Summary of Conclusions .... 82 

Bibliography ..... 85 

Index ...... 87 



PEEFACE. 

During the last decade the interest taken in tlie 
''simplified spelling" movement and in the improve- 
ment of teaching spelling has been widespread. This 
is not surprising, in view of the fact that spelling is a 
fundamental social tool. No person can be consid- 
ered socially efficient, in all that these words imply, 
unless he is able skillfully to manipulate this tool. 
There are few elementary school subjects in which 
inefficiency is more swiftly detected and more se- 
verely reprobated in later life than in spelling. There 
are few elementary branches in the teaching of which 
the schools have been charged with more uneconomi- 
cal use of time. In 10 of our largest cities, 7.22 per 
cent, of the pupil's time in the elementary schools 
is devoted to the study of spelling, and yet the com- 
plaint continues to be made that the elementary 
schools, and even the secondary schools, are flooding 
the country with an army of inefficient orthographers. 
It has, therefore, become the custom of condemning 
the schools because they break down in their funda- 
mental mission — the developing of skill in the basal 
instruments of social control. 

School superintendents and teachers have felt the 
justice and the sting of these hostile criticisms, and 
have attempted to provide a remedy by increasing 
the time devoted to the study of spelling or by chang- 
ing the methods of teaching. The results have not 
always been satisfactory. Faddists have arisen and 



Vlll SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

proclaimed the discovery or invention of a new 
method which would revolutionize the teaching of 
spelling. The chief claim for most of these methods 
has been that they would provide a "royal road to 
orthography," easy of travel for the footsore, the 
weary or the indolent. One of these royal roads, the 
one most frequently pointed out, leads via the inci- 
dental method. 

The writer has never believed that with an orthog- 
raphy so irrational and complicated as is the case 
with English spelling orthographic excellence was 
to be found along some royal road. He has been of 
the conviction that efficiency in the use of a mechani- 
cal subject-matter such as spelling was to be found 
in the employment of a drill technique fashioned in 
accordance with the laws of habit formation. Two 
years ago he was afforded the opportunity of observ- 
ing the use of a spelling drill in the public schools of 
Cleveland, which fulfilled some of the psychological 
requirements of a good drill technique. Since the 
same method was used in all the schools of the city, 
the entire system constituted, in effect, an experi- 
mental school in spelling, and afforded favorable con- 
ditions under which to conduct an experimental in- 
vestigation in spelling. The following pages con- 
tain the results of one such investigation. It was the 
intention to follow this study with a different series 
of tests, but circumstances now make this impossible. 

J. E. Wallace Wallin. 

The New Jersey State Village for Epileptics 
at Skillman, April, 1911. 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTION. 

Two stock methods of teaching spelling are in cur- 
rent nse, the incidental and the drill methods. When 
the former is followed no provision is made in the 
daily program for a set spelling period, either for 
study or reciting, nor is there a definite assignment 
in spelling for home work. The study of spelling 
is made an incident to the study of the other branches 
of the daily program — language, grammar, geogra- 
phy, history, theme writing, etc. This method is of 
a piece with the method of correlation of the Her- 
bartian school, and is theoretically defended on the 
same grounds. It is often referred to as the natural 
method, because the child is taught to spell in con- 
nected discourse, particularly in connected written 
composition; in other words, in the habitual situa- 
tions of life. These situations are more complex 
than writing arbitrarily chosen word lists, and they 
are the only situations in which writing ultimately 
has any value. In the out-of-school situations we 
are scarcely ever obliged to spell except when we 
write series of words, or sentences (essays, letters, 
reports, addresses, copy) . The claim is set up, there- 
fore, that to produce satisfactory results spelling 
should be studied in school situations which con- 
tain identical elements with life situations, and not 



Z SPELLING EFFICIEXCY. 

in artificial situations, which are less complex and 
less realistic. To study spelling in this way, inci- 
dentally, is to render the process dynamic and prac- 
tical. We commonly master a subject when we find 
practical use for it. The child will learn the funda- 
mental mathematical processes with avidity when 
he realizes that they supply the means for summing 
up his scores in his games, or for pursuing success- 
fully the constructive activities in the manual train- 
ing shop, or for conducting the financial operations 
in the makebelieve school bank. Memorizing a poem 
in order to dramatize it renders the learning prac- 
tical. To test knowledge by use or application sup- 
plies then a vital motive for its acquisition: knowl- 
edge getting only becomes dynamic when impelled 
by the need of solving a problematical situation 
which is practical and which can only be solved by 
the acquisition of a new knowledge content. Now, the 
incidental spelling method, just because it stresses 
the application phase of knowledge, is superior, it 
is contended, to the spelling drill which, since it is 
divorced from a practical, d^Tiamic situation, is 
formal and lifeless. It is immaterial to the "inci- 
dentalist" whether or not the child spells words cor- 
rectly in lists or columns, since he has no use for 
column or list spelling in the world's work, just so 
he spells them correctly in sentences, phrases and 
paragraphs. 

The first objection urged against the drill, there- 
fore, by the incidentalist is that it is artificial, di- 
vorced from life and formal, while the incidental 
method is dynamic and natural, since it contains 
elements that are identical with complex practical 
life situations. 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. O 

Because the spelling drill is formal it is contended 
tliat it degenerates into a mechanical grind which 
either becomes a refuge for the naturally slothful 
pupils — it is the line of least resistance for the pupils 
who are too indolent to think — or becomes a monoto- 
nous grind against the intolerable monotony of which 
the better pupils rebel, and which engenders in these 
an aversion toward school life. The lazy boy likes 
the drill, because it is an easy and superficial process, 
like all mechanical activities — walking, babbling, 
breathing, etc. Its basis is instinctive — the instinc- 
tive tendency to imitate. The nervous system is so 
constituted at birth that it tends to repeat certain 
experiences. The child is born with the tendency 
to la-la in imitation of others or his own spontaneous 
or accidental utterances. The lazy child thus natu- 
rally takes to iteration and reiteration, in prefer- 
ence to thinking, which runs counter to instinct and 
requires effort. It is easier to ^' learn" what rules, 
demonstrations, adjectives and interjections are by 
simply repeating and memorizing statements and 
lists of words than by striving to comprehend them. 

On the other hand, for the intelligent pupil the 
drill is a paralyzing grind. Based on sheer repeti- 
tion, it tends to hypnotize and stupefy the mind. It 
benumbs the higher intellectual powers. It stresses 
the memory at the expense of judgment and com- 
prehension, and at best produces only, as in China, 
a race of memory prodigies. It puts a premium 
upon receptivity, docility, imitation, re-learning, 
iteration, and discounts creativeness, inventiveness, 
independence, spontaneity and originality. It makes 
for mediocrity, not genius ; and produces hide-bound 
traditionalists — our educational stokers and hewers 



4 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

of wood. Its natural result is the pernicious system 
of cramming now rife in the colleges and lower 
schools. The drill has thus become the be-all and 
end-all of the educative process. The mechanical, 
memory grind has spread insidiously to all the 
branches, and has become unconsciously the fixed 
ideal of mental acquisition. Memorizing and learn- 
ing have thus become synonymous. 

This reverses the natural order of learning. Out 
of the school we strive to comprehend first, and then 
memorize. We first try to understand the directions 
given to us, and then fix them in the memory. But 
in school we encourage the child to memorize first 
and understand afterward. We argue that the raw 
materials in the form of memories will supply a 
leaven which will ferment at the proper time into 
the finished products of judgment and understand- 
ing. But frequently the pupils have so much to 
' ' learn ' ' that they never have time to think or under- 
stand. 

Another objection to the drill method of acquisi- 
tion is that it is uneconomical. In the drill no 
pretense is made of supplying the mind with nour- 
ishment. Tlie child is obliged to spend his time 
cramming over old materials when he should be 
acquiring new facts. To keep on repeating old com- 
binations deadens the mind instead of nourishes 
it. Instead of mental growth mental stagnation 
follows. At the same time, the incidental method 
is a valuable measure for relieving our congested 
modern curriculum. A specific period for study- 
ing and reciting some other branch becomes avail- 
able, without any impairment of spelling efficiency. 
So far as there is any need for fixing the spelling 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 

of words, this can be secured by constant attention 
to spelling in the other branches of the curriculum. 

Finally, it is contended that tests of spelling ef- 
ficiency show that children spell as well in schools 
where the spelling drill has been abolished as in 
schools where it is in vogue — of this more later. 

It may be frankly conceded that there is force 
in many of these objections. There is not enough 
genuine, thought-provoking, vital work in many 
schools, and too much tolerance of glib, meaning- 
less symbols. There is too often a tendency to per- 
mit children to deal with empty husks and shadows 
instead of realities, and to be satisfied with the pre- 
tense and illusion of knowledge. There is too little 
emphasis on understanding, creativeness and origi- 
nality, too little attempt to motivate learning by 
relating it to a relevant situation representing a 
present need in the child's experience; too much 
unvarying repetition of identical forms instead of 
application of old data to new instances and situa- 
tions. But while granting this, it may also be af- 
firmed that many objections to the drill are due 
to abuses or misconceptions of the drill. The defense 
of the drill, however, cannot be attempted here (13^), 
except as it relates to teaching spelling. 

The drill method, as distinguished from the in- 
cidental, requires special periods for the study and 
reciting of spelling. It rests its contention pri- 
marily upon the fact that spelling is merely a tool. 
It has no value in itself, i. e., it has no intrinsic eon- 
tent value, as has a knowledge of foods, diseases, 
poisons, skins, woods, metals, etc. If there were 



^ These numbers refer to the references cited in the bibliography 
at the end of the book. 



b SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

no writing or reading it would be superfluous — a 
wholly valueless content, having neither practical, 
cultural, ornamental nor social value. But it does 
have an instrumental value. As an instrument it 
is an indispensable social necessity — a social instru- 
ment of control for thought conveyance. It enables 
us to communicate our thoughts in writing or print- 
ing. Without it we could not read. Its value, there- 
fore , is instrumental, just as numbers (figuring, 
computation) are valuable as tools which enable us to 
control the numerical and quantitative aspects of 
our environment, but have no intrinsic content value. 
All subjects contain these instrumental units of facts 
which enable us to perform certain activities, or to 
acquire further knowledge, power or skill. While 
they are of great value as means for controlling 
values, they may possess no independent values. 
To illustrate: the hatchet, saw, plane and chisel 
serve as tools by means of which we can extend our 
control over physical values in our environment. 
By controlling these we build houses for protec- 
tion, bridges and conveyances for transportation, 
chairs and couches for supports, etc. If we could 
accomplish nothing with them they would be use- 
less. Spelling, then, is a tool whereby we extend 
our control over certain social values. 

Now, the value of a tool as a tool is directly pro- 
portioned to our ability to use it skillfully. The 
craftsman's success depends upon his ability to 
hold and manipulate his chisel, hammer and saw 
with facility, accuracy, dispatch and without effort; 
the piano player's success depends upon the skill- 
ful adjustment of certain pressures and rates of 
movement of fingers and arms, or in a word, upon 



IX RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. < 

technique; the writer's success, on the instrumental 
side, depends on his ability to spell, punctuate, 
space, indent, etc., correctly, rapidly and readily. 
Furthermore, the facile, accurate and economical 
(that is, the skillful) use of tools means automatic 
control of the elements of form and execution — of 
posture and manipulation. Unless the pianist can 
automatically manipulate his finger, arm, wrist, 
foot and eye movements, he will not be able to at- 
tend to those finer nuances, shadings and interpre- 
tations which constitute the soul of artistic rendi- 
tion. As long as the sculptor must divide his at- 
tention between his model or his ideal, and his chisel 
and mallet, he will bungle. He must be able to hold 
his chisel just right and gage the blows just right, 
without the necessity of concentrating his attention 
upon these mechanical elements. In artistic crea- 
tion or skilled artisanship the instruments of execu- 
tion should take care of themselves. 

Similarly we have certain unvarying mechanical 
subject-matter of the intellectual sort which should 
be reduced to an unconscious automatic basis — cer- 
tain fundamental A, B, C's of knowledge, certain 
basal tool facts and ideas, such as spelling, pro- 
nunciation, word meanings, the fundamental mathe- 
matical processes and basic tables, certain funda- 
mental historical dates, rules and principles, certain 
literary gems or adages, and certain muscle co- 
ordinations closely related to intellectual func- 
tions. These ideas or facts, because they are al- 
most universally indispensable tools in modern life, 
should be so firmly knit together that when one 
term of the association occurs the other will func- 
tion automatically at once. The moment the word 



8 • SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

is heard or thought the associated visual S5Tnbols 
should come to consciousness unhesitatingly. The 
essayist cannot write a clear, forcible, logical paper 
if his attention must be diverted frequently by the 
efforts to hold and move the pen properly, or to 
spell and punctuate correctly. To be able to at- 
tend fully to the content, the elements of form must 
be organized into habits, so that they will function 
with mechanical precision and without conscious 
supervision. 

The contention of the advocate of the drill, then, 
is that spelling is one of the most obvious examples 
of subject-matter that is instrumental in value, and 
invariable and mechanical in nature, and of which 
every socially efficient person must have anaiitomatic 
command. On the question of how this skillful control 
is to be secured, he considers that the "incidentalist" 
is fundamentally in error. The incidentalist main- 
tains that attention should be focused upon the 
content of knowledge (the facts and relations in 
geography, history, language, etc.), for the form 
(spelling) will take care of itself: the visual form 
of the written words will be incidentally and simul- 
taneously absorbed as the contents are conned. At- 
tention to the form should only be exceptional or 
incidental. 

This position, the upholder of the drill insists, 
rests upon a misconception of the process of habit 
formation. The same factors which condition the 
formation of habits must condition the drill proc- 
ess, for the central element and aim in both are the 
same, viz., practice or repetition, and the produc- 
tion of a state of relative automatism. The law 
according to which habits are formed embraces 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. \) 

three fundamental factors: initial focalization of 
attention, attentive repetition and a final state of 
automatic behavior. To teach a child to write I 
must first of all get his attention focused upon the 
writing processes. A voluntary action can be per- 
formed onlj^ in a state of consciousness. But that 
which does not get into attention does not get into 
consciousness — except possiMy the unconscious 
cerebal modifications which accompany the gradual 
maturing of the nervous organism, which affect the 
total organization of the mind, andl certain sub- 
conscious influences the existence of which is still 
hypothetical. 

' The first thing that the teacher should do then 
is to get the child to concentrate on the processes 
to be automatized. This she does by verbal direc- 
tions, by displaying the form or letter which is to 
be imitated, by reproducing the form before the 
child's eyes, so that he obtains a visual-form image 
and a visual-motor image, by inducing the child to 
imitate the observed movements, so that he gets 
a tactual-motor series of images of his own move- 
ments, etc. By such means as these we get the child 
to attend well at the very outset to the task set be- 
fore him. In too many drills this fundamental ele- 
ment, the initial focalization of attention, is en- 
tirely neglected. The child gets no clear idea of 
what he must do ; he has no definite ideal or aim to 
guide and vitalize his efforts. Sometimes the aims 
presented are so numerous that initial focalization 
is out of the question: the instructions cover too 
many points; attention at the outset is bewildered 
instead of focalized. Attention can be focalized on 
a new process only when the directions are clear, 
definite and specific. 



10 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

After the initial focalization there must be at- 
tentive repetition. After the child has a definite 
image of his form and the writing movements, he 
must keep on repeating it. But merely mechanical 
or rote repetition will prove largely futile. If his 
attention is upon the passing throngs outside of 
the window his repetitions will avail him little. In- 
attentive repetitions tend to deteriorate; they pro- 
duce copies which grow increasingly inferior to the 
model. The writing at the bottom of the copy-book 
is usually poorer than at the top. The attention to 
the model has grown poorer. In the average drill 
the child repeats in a state of relative inattention; 
a part of his attention is on something else — the 
teacher, his neighbors, his headache, hunger, plays 
during recess, etc. Of course the results are dis- 
appointing, and the drill is condemned. The trouble 
is that the second fundamental condition of the drill 
has not been supplied. The vital practical solution 
of the difficulty consists, then, not in the elimination 
of the drill, but in devising means of keeping the 
child's attention riveted on his reiterated tasks. 

Finally, in the genuine drill, the attentive repeti- 
tions must be continued until a stage of automatic 
control has been reached or at least closely ap- 
proximated. If the child grows weary and gives up 
before this stage is reached, his efforts will count 
for little. Unless the neurone modifications have 
been thoroughly solidified, the results will not per- 
sist, and the practice effects will quickly vanish. 
Our hereditary habits, or instincts, which have been 
organized by innumerable repetitions during the ages 
do not thus vanish; they rest upon a stable neural 
substrate. What has been found essential in the 
organization of racial habits can probably not be 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 11 

dispensed with in the formation of individual hab- 
its. Neural pathways result only from repeated (or 
violent) neural currents. Even at its best, indi- 
vidual repetition will not produce the stability that 
has been produced by racial repetition. But the 
great artists know of no substitutes. It is safe to 
say that the average drill stops short of the final 
stage, the stage of mechanization. The child has 
been assigned so many words to learn in a spelling 
lesson that effective concentration has been impos- 
sible; and his desire for constant change and va- 
riety has been so fully gratified that there has not 
been even a semblance of attentive repetition. Un- 
der such conditions the results could not have been 
otherwise than disappointing, for no drill technique 
has been followed. 

What, now, briefly, is the application of the psy- 
chology of habit-formation to the question of the 
incidental method? If the child absorbs the con- 
tent when he is reading it is because he attends to 
it; if he gets the form it is because it has been at- 
tended to; if he gets both the content and the form 
in the same reading it is because attention has see- 
sawed between the two. Assimilation in both cases 
is the result of focalization. But a rapid alternation 
or splitting up of attention, such as is required in the 
incidental method, is uneconomical; something will 
be lost on the side of content and something on the 
side of the form — the less familiar the form and 
content are the greater the loss. If the content is 
unfamiliar the loss will bear most heavily on the 
form; if the form is unfamiliar the content is liable 
to suffer most. Ordinarily the form will suffer 
most, because usually when we read we are pri- 



12 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

marily interested in a certain content and care noth- 
ing about the form. Moreover, the ideal mastery 
of form and content differs radically in aim. The 
perfect mastery of the content is realized when a 
state of completely conscious appreciation or com- 
prehension is attained, while the perfect mastery 
of the form culminates in a state of unconscious 
mechanical control. But, as has been shown, this 
state of automatic behaviour presupposes earlier 
states of focalized initial attention and a series of 
attentive repetitions. On theoretical grounds, if on 
no others (the experimental evidence will be pre- 
sented later), the form, because its control makes 
such claims upon consciousness, should be mastered 
in a separate exercise. 

The disciple of the drill, however, does not by 
any means take the ground that the incidental 
teaching of spelling should be wholly abolished. 
He believes that the acquisition of knowledge 
should be tested not only by its verbal reproduc- 
tion, but by its application or use in all the practi- 
cal situations afforded in the school community, so 
that inevitably the drill method involves the inci- 
dental in the stage of application. But he does 
maintain that the stock method for the initial ac- 
quisition of the spelling forms must be the drill 
method, and that the incidental method must be used 
only incidentally. 

Aside from this objection, when the use of the 
incidental method consists only, as is often the case, 
in the correction of misspellings in the regular writ- 
ten work of the school, the advocate of the drill 
again points to a conflict of the method with the 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 13 

economics of habit formation. In forming habits 
one should be careful to make the first coordina- 
tions correctly. One must avoid suggesting wrong 
patterns. Only the correct models should be ex- 
hibited. The child should not be allowed to make 
initial mistakes, for then there will be no errors to 
correct. It is harder to form correct reactions 
after wrong ones have been formed or started. By 
avoiding the formation of wrong habits, the energy 
saved in rooting out mistakes can be used for build- 
ing up the right coordinations. In the drill method 
one does not wait to teach the spelling of words 
until the child has learned to spell them incor- 
rectly. But this is exactly what the incidental 
method, as often employed, does. The child's at- 
tention is focalized upon the incorrect orthography, 
and this tends to suggest the wrong form rather 
than the right — by the known principle of contrary 
suggestion. It is better that the child should never 
know the incorrect form, so that there will be no 
chance for wrong suggestions to arise. Better 
than to permit a wrong habit to form and then at- 
tempt to break it, is to so arrange the conditions 
that the formation of the right habits will be easier 
than the formation of the wrong ones. Instruction 
should be essentially a process of teaching, instead 
of unteaching. 

It is in the last objection, which was mentioned 
above, that the incidentalist offers his chief indict- 
ment of the spelling drill and strikes at its very 
vitals. Even if we concede, he insists, that the drill 
may develop spelling efficiency, this efficiency is so 
highly specialized that the proficiency which has 
been developed in the formal spelling exercises at- 
taches only to the spelling of columns or lists of 



14 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

words and is not realized in the writing- of com- 
positions or themes. The fact that the child spells 
well in the spelling lesson is no guarantee that he 
will spell well in his letters or essays. Spelling- 
efficiency does not generalize; spelling word lists 
and spelling in connected discourse are two differ- 
ent things. Now the range of si3elling efficiency 
developed by the drill method is so narrow — 
columns or lists of words — that it is not very 
useful for practical purposes. Hence we find the 
"spelling grind" denounced as futile (Rice: 10^), 
because there is no discoverable relation between 
the spelliug drill and the result (Cornman: 6). The 
spelling result is "a constant quantity altogether 
independent of the method of teaching," a "func- 
tion of the general pedagogical health of the class," 
(Cornman), most largely dependent upon the per- 
sonality of the teacher and the maturity of the 
pupil (Rice, Cornman), his "degree of mental de- 
velopment as measured by the school grade." The 
minimum degree of efficiency that may be demanded 
in the written exercises of the primary pupils is 
from 94-97%, and in the grammar grades from 97- 
99.5%, and this can be obtained without the drill; 
hence we are not justified in attempting by a drill 
technique to raise the average: sensori-motor hab- 
its cannot be further organized or strengthened 
after they have attained so high a degree of effi- 
ciency (Cornman). It matters not that the average 



^Eice equivocates somewhat. He heads his article "The Futility 
of the Spelling Grind," and ostensibly sets out to demonstrate its 
futility. But he shows by his own investigation that the children 
who bad been drilled made the best spellers, and. he advocates out 
and out the setting aside of not more than fifteen minutes daily for 
the special study of spelling. 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 15 

Spelling efficiency in many schools as determined 
by tests ranges from only 50% up. For 33,000 
pupils tested the results varied from 53.5 to 84.2% 
in the case of one test and one group of children, and 
from 64.2 to 84.4% in the case of another. In one 
group of fifteen schools the building averages ranged 
from 73.3 to 77.9% ; for a group of twelve cities 
the range was 70.6 to 74.8% (Rice). For thirteen 
schools in Philadelphia the building average was 
70% (Cornman). Both of these writers seem agreed 
— that is the general tenor of the articles — that the 
following factors have no material influence, or at 
most a very slight influence, upon spelling effi- 
ciency: heredity, occupation of parents (referring 
specifically to unskilled workers), the extension of 
time beyond a certain minimum, frequency of re- 
views, writing sentences, doing much reading, the 
phonic method (the foregoing are mentioned espe- 
cially by Rice), extensive oral drills; exclusively 
written exercises, syllabification, or the photo- 
graphic or flash exposure of the words. The 
method or device is thus merely an incident in 
learning to spell. 

These conclusions fly directly in the face of the 
results of tests by other investigators. Meumann 
concludes from several investigations that spelling 
methods do vary in effectiveness. He found that 
the best method was to "combine the sight of the 
new word with the analytical copying of it, plus at 
least a whispered pronunciation of its constituent 
elements." Abbott (1) found in an investigation 
on four trained subjects that when the words 
were spelled out to them they invariably substi- 
tuted visual imagery, that the letters heard were 



16 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

never recalled in the form of auditory imagery, 
that the vocalization of letters hindered, but the vo- 
calization of syllables aided learning to spell when 
words were presented visually, and that whatever 
aids visual presentation aids the learning. The lat- 
ter conclusion is borne out by Kratz's results (9). 
He tested the ability of 743 pupils to spell words, 
using a modification of Ebbinghaus' tests, after 
they had been clearly and slowly pronounced, dis- 
played to the eye in large type, and looked at and 
named in concert. The per cents, were 44.8 fo for 
the auditory series, 66.2% for the visual, and 73.7% 
for the auditory-visual — a demonstrated difference 
as dependent upon method of 28.9%. It was fur- 
ther ascertained, by a test of the ability to observe, 
that the best spellers averaged more objects ob- 
served than the poor ones (these tests were not 
conducted with high regard for nicety of precis- 
ion). The writer concludes that in learning to spell 
the main appeal must be to the eyes. Bean refers 
to the poor spelling by the pupils of the School of 
Education of the University of Chicago, and attrib- 
utes it to the fact that spelling is (o^as) ''taught 
there only by criticism of written work and never 
by drill.'' He refers to a mentally retarded boy, 
sixteen years old, doing sixth year work and very 
poor in spelling, who "learned spelling with sur- 
prising ease" when taught ''in the usual way." 
He prepared four lessons a day from an eighth 
grade spelling book, and frequently did not miss 
a word during five successive days (3). 

The effectiveness of added time and special drill 
in spelling has been demonstrated in various school 
systems where the conditions have allowed of a 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. It 

degree of control that has insured uniformity of 
method. In the high school affiliated with the School 
of Education of Missouri State University the pu- 
pils who averaged one misspelled word per page in 
their written work in the branches pursued were 
obliged to attend a special class until they reached 
a given standard in their composition work (Char- 
ters (5). Here they studied: (1) certain spelling 
rules, (2) certain rules for memorizing, and (3) cer- 
tain methods for detecting and correcting mistakes 
in spelling. The result was that only two of the 
seventy pupils of last year now remain in the class. 
There has been a marked improvement in spelling. 
It has made focal the necessity of a good standard 
in spelling, cured negligence and aided the incor- 
rigibly poor speller. 

In Milwaukee a drill method has been in use — two 
new words are learned each day and repeated during 
successive weeks — with the result that the spelling 
has nearly attained perfection (11). 

Perhaps nowhere has a consistent drill method 
been in such uniform use as in Cleveland during the 
last few years ; in fact, the whole school system may 
be regarded in the light of an experimental school in 
respect to spelling. 

The drill technique observed has conformed to the 
law of habit formation, as described above (see also 
8 and 13). First, the initial daily focalization of at- 
tention is secured by limiting the number of new 
words assigned to two per day (called dominant 
words). Instead of dispersing the child's attention 
over twenty or more words, it is intensively focalized 
upon two words. The initial focalization is secured 
in other ways than merely limiting the number of 
words. The words are printed conspicuously in 



18 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

large type at the head of each day's lessou, and thus 
attract attention through the operation of the laws 
of primary passive attention. The child is also re- 
quired to construct sentences of his own in which the 
words are used. This not only redirects attention to 
the words, but develops skill in the use of the words 
in composition. It supplies a means of practically 
applying the words. When the meaning of a word is 
ol3Scure, the pupil must look it up in the dictionary; 
and this also converges attention upon the word. Ten 
new words thus receive concentrated attack in one 
week. The conditions of initial focalization have 
been realized. 

Second, attentive repetition is secured, partly by 
what has already been said, and partly by a scheme 
of systematic drills and reviews. The ten words 
focalized during the week recur as subordinate words 
during the next two weeks. They are also made the 
subject of special review once a week. At the end of 
every eighth week oral and written interschool con- 
tests between the same grades in all the schools of 
the system are conducted, based upon the eighty 
words focalized and reviewed during this period. 
Similar annual contests are also held, and the fol- 
lowing year the words are again reviewed as subor- 
dinates. Each focalized word is reviewed, therefore, 
four times (or five, including the initial assignment) 
in two years. Kecourse is had to the interschool con- 
tests in. order to secure attentive repetitions and to 
vitalize the process. Notivation is thus secured by 
appealing to the child's instincts of emulation, riv- 
alry and pride in the prestige of his class and school. 

Third, this method of thoroughgoing initial focal- 
ization and attentive repetition should have yielded 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 19 

a high degree of automatic mastery of the spelling of 
a considerable number of words. As a matter of 
fact, the spelling efficiency engendered by this spell- 
ing technique in the Cleveland schools is quite re- 
markable, as shown by the following figures. 

In the first interschool spelling contest the pupils 
of the eighth grade averaged 1.5 words per pupil 
incorrectly spelled in a total of 120 words. In the 
corresponding test one year later, 1907, or one year 
after the introduction of the drill described above, 
the average number of errors per child was only .483 
of a word. In 1908 a test, embracing 50 words, given 
by a specially appointed educational commission in 
1905 (consisting of Presidents Howe and Thwing, 
and Professor Avery), was repeated with all the 
pupils of the city in the same grade. In the 1908 test 
the average number of misspelled words per child 
was three, as against thirteen in 1905. The spelling 
efficiency had increased from 74 to 94%. Sim- 
ilarly, a test given in Chicago was repeated in 72 
eighth grades, giving an average spelling efficiency 
of 84.17%. This figure attains its sig-nificance 
in view of the fact that 84% was the record of 
the best individual eighth grade in Chicago, while a 
slightly higher percentage was the average of the 72 
in Cleveland. Better known is the 1908 N. E. A. 
Spelling Contest, in which Cleveland scored the high- 
est success. The contest was based upon the Lord- 
Baylor-Brown-Stone list of words. In this Cleveland 
totaled 40 errors, while Pittsburg totaled 47, New 
Orleans &Q, and Erie 85. The following year a spell- 
ing test given in Cleveland in 1858 was repeated, 
with the result that the average was one misspelled 
word less per pupil than in 1858. In one of the early 



20 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

tests of 1909, given to the pupils of the seventh grade 
of two schools, composed largely of Jewish children, 
out of 12,800 possible mistakes only "one boy in each 
school made one error." In the annual contest of 
May, 1909, the spelling proficiency in the fifth grade 
reached 95% ; in the sixth grade, 96% ; in the sev- 
enth, 97.16%, and in the eighth, 97.2, or a general 
average for these grades of 96.34%. 

In the eig'hth-week contest in November, 1909, 
21,290 of 35,098 pupils in the various grades gave 
perfect returns in both the oral and written contests, 
and the average was 1.235 incorrectly spelled words 
for each pupil in both tests. 

In the corresponding contests in January, 1910, 
17,127 of the 33,364 pupils spelled all the words cor- 
rectly, and the average number of errors per pupil 
was 1.698. 

In the oral contests of last March, in which 33,928 
pupils in the third to eighth grades, inclusive, par- 
took, the number of misspellings was 9,971. The 
total number of possible chances to misspell was 
6,785,600, or, since each pupil spelled only five words, 
169,640. This gives an average efficiency of about 94 
per cent., which is quite satisfactory in view of the 
conditions: each pupil received only five chances to 
spell from a list of 200 words. Perfect grades were 
obtained by 5,377 pupils. In the written test, on the 
other hand, in which was included homonyms on 
which there had been no systematic instruction or 
drill, the efficiency dropped to 89.6 per cent. 

In the annual contest of May 31, 1910, based on 
320 words, the average standing for all the pupils 
—over 33,000— was 94.6% in the oral test, and 96.1 
in the written. 



IN RELATION TO A«E, GRADE AND SEX. 21 

Here we have a degree of efficiency produced by 
the application of certain fundamental elements of 
the drill that is impressive. Certain facts will add 
emphasis to this impressiveness. The spelling con- 
tests in Cleveland are conducted under rather rig- 
orous conditions: i's not dotted and capitals not 
properly used count as mistakes; the written work 
must be corrected by two teachers ; a second teacher 
must keep the record in the oral contests. Further- 
more, the spelling drills in the elementary schools of 
Cleveland consume only 5.96% of the available 
time, as compared with 7.22%, the average for 
a number of the leading cities of the country. More- 
over, these results present a striking contrast to the 
results of Rice's column and sentence tests for twen- 
ty-one cities of the country.^ Here the spelling 
efficiency, as already mentioned, ranged from 53.5 
per cent., in the fourth grade, to 84.2%, in the 
eighth grade. In another test carried out by Rice 
himself the averages for entire buildings ranged 
from 73.3 to 77.9%. Only in the case of fifteen 
schools for the eighth grade did the results approxi- 
mate to any degree perfect scores. This was in the 
case of a composition test which did not seem to be 
sufficiently difficult to set any problem to pupils of 
their attainments. The words used in the Cleveland 
tests differ for the various grades, and many of them 
are difficult words. In fact, the lists are compiled 
from words submitted by the teachers as most fre- 
quently misspelled. 

Mention should also be made of the Bailey-Manly 
(2) system of teaching spelling, which the authors 
assert has proved very effective. Some of the promi- 

^ These teats, repeated in Philadelphia, gave similar results. 



22 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

nent features of their spellers are : Learning a mini- 
mum number of new words each day (three in the 
second grade) ; regular reviews of difficult words ; the 
grading of the words; the elimination of difficult, 
infrequently used words; distinct pronunciation be- 
fore spelling; sentence and dictation writing; appeal- 
ing to the various types of memory (auditory, visual 
and motor presentations) ; phonic and other drills; 
calling attention to correct forms and preventing 
guessing or the writing of the incorrect forms. 

Obviously the above facts do not warrant the 
assertion that method in teaching spelling is merely 
an incidental detail, nor do they lend support to the 
contention that modern pedagogy demands the sub- 
stitution of the incidental for the drill method. As 
will be seen later from our experimental results, it 
is not a question of drill or no drill, but a question of 
evolving and economically using a psychologically 
justifiable and pedagogically efficient drill technique, 
instead of using slipshod and happy-go-lucky drills. 
Griven such a technique, the vital question at issue 
will be the question of transfer. 

The "spelling grind," no matter how good the 
technique is, will still be "futile" if the proficiency 
engendered does not transfer to connected written 
composition. The incidentalist affirms that it does 
not, as shown by actual schoolroom tests. Since it is 
alleged that these do not show transfer, the question 
resolves itself into determining the reliability or 
validity of the tests. It can be shown, I believe, that 
the relevancy of these — or at least those with which 
I am familiar — may be questioned, because if we 
would determine experimentally the degree of trans- 
ferability of spelling efficiency engendered by the 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SBX. 23 

drill to connected writing we must at least make sure 
that the product we are testing is the result of a gen- 
uine drill technique. We must have objective control 
of the conditions. This is not possible when random 
tests are made in cities here and there throughout 
the country, where all sorts of methods have been in 
use. And when our tests are confined to the schools 
of one city we have no right to assume that a drill is 
in vogue simply because special periods are provided 
in the program for spelling. That fact guarantees 
at most only one thing: that a certain amount of 
time is given to the special study of spelling. It sig- 
nifies nothing regarding the method, or precise tech- 
nique, employed. Moreover, the tests made have 
been unfair in yet another respect: the ranking of 
the papers has been determined by all the words mis- 
spelled, regardless of whether they have been sub- 
jected to special study or drill. No attempt has been 
made to experimentally determine transfer of spell- 
ing ability on the basis of a list of test words which 
are the same in the "column'' and ''composition" 
tests and which were acquired in a column drill. And 
yet this condition is fundamental, particularly in 
view of the extreme conclusions which have been 
drawn from the tests thus far made, and particularly 
in view of the fact that the question of transfer does 
not mean — and only the more extreme adherents of 
the drill would so maintain — that, in a language 
whose orthography is so chaotic and irrational, as is 
the case with English — the efficiency engendered by 
drills on a given list of words will spread to any 
other words whatsoever in the language, no matter 
how different in orthography, etymology, or in re- 
spect to the rules which govern their structure. He 



24 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

does not urge universal transferability in justifica- 
tion of the drill, save at most in the matter of method 
or ideal} The method of acquiring words in columns 
will have something in common with acquiring words 
in any other way. But he does maintain that the 
spelling skill developed by column drills will spread 
to composition work when the elements are identical, 
or similar, or based upon fundamentally similar laws 
of structure. Indeed, to justify the column drills it 
is only necessary to show that ability will transfer 
when identical elements are present, i.e., when the 
words are the same. The incidentalist would not 
affirm that learning to spell certain words in reading 
and writing sentences will develop a universal spell- 
ing ability which will enable the child to spell any 
word which has not occurred in his reading. To make 
a legitimate and adequate test of the question of 
transfer, therefore, it is necessary to observe the 
following conditions : Dictate to the children compo- 
sitions, relevant to their stage of development and 
interests, containing among other words a given 
number of test words which have at some previous 
time been subjected to a thoroughgoing drill treat- 
ment in columns. This test should be paralleled by 
a column test containing the selected list of test 
words. In correcting the papers only the drill or test 
words are to be considered. Compliance with these 
conditions will strip the problem of irrelevant com- 
plications, and eliminate all factors save the factor 
under investigation, which scientific procedure de- 



^ It is not intended to categorically deny the possibility of transfer 
to subject-matter which is diflferent in nature — a possibility which is 
at least indicated by a number of recent exiieriments. But the ques- 
tion may be left open here as it is not essential to the argument. 



IN RELATION TO AGE^ GRADE AND SEX. J.0 

mands shall be kept under controlled conditions. The 
question then becomes : Does learning to spell words 
correctly in one situation result in spelling them cor- 
rectly in a different situation? To proceed to solve 
the problem in the usual slap-dash manner is to beg 
the whole question, if we conceive it in terms of 
transfer. Accordingly, in the test to be described 
presently, the attempt has been made to supply the 
requirements which, as has been shown, are essential 
to the solution of the particular problem in hand. 

Before taking up the question of transfer, how- 
ever, it will be convenient to consider the differences 
in spelling efficiency which were found between vari- 
ous schools, grades, ages, and the two sexes. 



CHAPTER II. 

SPELLING PROFICIENCY AS MEASURED BY 

SCHOOL AND GRADE TOTALS. 

Somewliat over one thousand children in three dif- 
ferent public schools in Cleveland, from the fourth to 
the eighth grade, inclusive, were tested on lists of 
from forty to fifty words. The lists follow Table I. 
These w^ords had been given in the regular inter- 
school contests of November, 1909, and January, 
1910. Some of the words had been drilled upon in 
September and October (all those used in schools A 
and B, except grades four and five), and the others 
in October and November. The tests were given in 
November (the last two days), December and Janu- 
ary (see Table I for details), so that the time which 
had elapsed between the studying of the words and 
the tests varied from about three to thirteen weeks. 
School C probably offers an exception to this, be- 
cause the column test for this school was the regular 
January interschool test, given by the authorities 
under the usual regulations, for which the children, 
or at least some of them, probably made some special 
preparation. My composition test followed this 
by about one week. For my tests there was, of 
course, no preparation made by the pupils. In the 
case of school A the composition test preceded the 
column test, while the reverse was true in school B 
— and in C, for the reason already given. The 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 2/ 

priority of the tests would not ceem to be material in 
the present case, since the children did not suspect 
that a seconod test was coming. Only the class aver- 
ages could be obtained in the column tests of school 
C, hence the results are not given separately for the 
different sections. 

The tests were conducted by the principals and 
teachers of the schools under exacting and detailed 
written instructions supplied by the writer.^ The 
instructions were explained in personal conference 
with the principals, and the fact that they must be 
rigidly followed was emphasized. The conditions to 
be observed were, briefly, the following : The pupils 
were to be given no aid, and were to be kept in total 
ignorance regarding the purpose of the tests, except 
that they were to be told to read through only once 
the words and compositions dictated to them, and 
make any corrections of misspellings observed (very 
few seemed to have profited by this suggestion). The 
tests were to be held in the various grades tested in 
a building at the same hour and on the same day. 
The pupils were to write the words and the composi- 
tions from the teacher's dictation. The teacher was 
asked to dictate clearly. The teachers of the classes 
tested wrote the compositions. It was explained that 
they should be simple in character, so that the child 



^For assistajiee in this work I am under obligations to Principals 
Laura K. Collister, Harriet E. Terrell, and Harriet E. Chase; and to 
the following teachers: Bertha Pratt, Eleanore Mitchell, Edna NeW' 
man, L. il. Burke, A. M. Borneman, Mary Payer, Amelia Worswick 
Lucy Belding, Eose Walcott, Rena Goss, Mary Armstrong, May Wood 
ley, Harriet Carey, Isabella Campbell, Lulu Slayton, Alice Wightman 
Ruth Evans, Lenora Dollins, Irma Collins, Ada Beckwith, Mary Han 
rahan, Ettina Wychgel, Mary Martin. Bertha Brown, Edith Tanner 
Clara Elmer, Jennie Gleeson, Nanna Ring, Estelle Kramer, and Ida 
Kelly. Rudolph B. Wall in has aided me in compiling and tabu 
lating the results. 



28 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

might understand them, and that they must contain 
all the test words and any other words needed to give 
continuity and meaning to the composition. It was 
no easy matter, obviously, to patch together a list of 
selected words of widely varying reference and dif- 
ficulty into a composition that would read smoothly 
and make a simple, coherent, intelligible context. It 
was believed that the teachers, who were constantly 
in direct touch with the children of the various 
classes, could do this with the greatest success. Upon 
examination of the narratives I find that some of 
them tended to make rather difficult reading, owing to 
the difficulty of some of the test words. The compo- 
sition tests were thus carried out under conditions 
that should be unfavorable rather than favorable for 
transfer. The correction of the papers was based 
upon the selected drill or test words, as already 
explained ; and fortunately the drill method in vogue 
in teaching spelling in the different schools was 
strictly uniform, as already explained. It will be 
recalled that the drill technique involved, as a sup- 
plementary feature, dictation work. Composition 
was also an element of the method, supplying the 
phase of application. 

The detailed results of these tests appear in the 
tables which follow. Our analysis of them may be 
considered under two headings. 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



29 



The Transfer of Spelling Efficiency. 
TABLE I. 



Composition Test. ] 


Column ' 


rest (list of words). 


1 
1 


o 




II 


1 

eg 


o 


i 

if 


1 
It 

n 


1 

> O 


A 
A 


5 a 
5b 

5 


11-29 
11-29 


38 
24 

62 


84.41 
90.93 

87.67 


1909 
12-1 


42 
23 

65 


91.22 
96.14 


87.81 
93.53 


Ave. 


93.68 


90.63 


A 
A 


6 a 
6 b 

6 


11-30 
11-30 


37 
39 

76 


95.90 
94.16 


12-1 
12-1 


39 

38 

77 


96.60 

97.82 


96.20 
95.99 


Ave. 


95.03 


97.21 


96.09 


A 
A 


7 a 
7 b 

7 


11-30 
11-30 


32 
31 

63 


91.25 
93.50 


12-1 
12-1 


30 

28 

58 


97.33 
96.40 

96.86 


94.29 
94.90 


Ave. 


92.37 


94.59 


A 


8 


11-30 


41 


92.9 
91.99 


12-2 


41 


93.90 


93.40 


A Ave. 


95.41 


93.70 


B 
B 


4 a 
4 b 

4 


12-10 
12-10 


42 
30 

72 


98.87 
96.67 

97.77 


12-9 
12-9 


43 
29 

72 


99.01 
99.06 


98.94 
97.86 


Ave. 


99.03 


98.40 


B 
B 


5 a 
5b 

5 


12-10 
12-10 


43 
43 

86 


98.20 
99.99 

99.09 


12-10 
12-10 


43 
43 

86 


99.31 
99.96 


98.75 
99.97 


Ave. 


99.63 


99.36 


B 
B 


6 a 
6b 

6 


12-10 
12-10 


40 
34 

74 


96.88 
99.92 


12-9 
12-9 


44 
34 

78 


96.43 
95.45 

95.94 


96.65 
97.68 


Ave. 


98.40 


97.16 



30 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 







TABLE I 


(Continued). 








Composition Test. 


Column 


Test (list of words). 


1 


i 


11 


o £ 

II 


1 


o 
01+; 

M 


t 

1 
11 


1 

il 
Is 


1 

> o 

<C2 


B 
B 
B 


7 a 
7b 

7c 


12-10 
12-10 
12-10 


39 
33 
37 


98.60 
97.70 
98.02 


12-9 
12-9 
12-9 


36 
30 
38 


99.18 
98.40 
97.91 


98.89 
98.05 
97.96 


Ave. 


7 




109 


98.10 




104 


'9l'4'9 


98.30 


B 
B 


8 a 
8b 


12-10 
12-10 


36 
42 


96.53 
96.43 


12-9 
12-9 


36 
42 


96.52 
96.49 


96.52 
96.46 


Ave. 


8 




78 


96.48 




78 


96.50 


96.49 


B Ave. 








97.97 






97.92 


97.94 


C 
C 


5 a 
5 b 


1-13 
1-13 


37 
43 


99.08 
98.50 


1910 








Ave. 


5 




80 


98.79 


1-6 


105 


99.12 


98.95 


C 
C 
C 


6 a 
6b 
6 c 


1-13 
1-13 
1-13 


42 
18 
35 


99.27 
95.66 
93.30 










Ave. 


6 




95 


96.07 


1-6 


105 


99.16 


97.61 


C 

c 
c 


7 a 
7b 
7 c 


1-13 
1-13 
1-13 


40 
18 
41 


98.00 
98.33 
96,20 










Ave. 


7 




99 


97.26 


1-6 


100 


99.14 


98.20 


C 
C 


8 a 
8b 


1-13 
1-13 


45 
42 


98.80 
98.71 










Ave. 


8 




87 


98.75 
97.72 


1-6 


87 


99.14 


98.97 


C Ave. 


99.14 


98.43 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



31 



TABLE 11. 

SUMMARIES. 
Averages for All Schools. 



B 


4 




72 


97.77 




72 


99.03 


A,B&C 


5 




228 


95.18 




256 


97.47 


A,B&C 


6 




245 


96.50 




260 


97.43 


A.B&C 


7 




271 


95.91 




262 


98.16 


A,B&C 


8 




206 


96.04 




206 


96.51 








1022 


96.28 




1056 


97.72 



Combined Averages for the Compositiou and Cojumn 
Tests, All Schools. 



Grades. 
Per cents. 



4 
98.40 


5 
96.31 


6 
96.95 


7 
97.03 


8 
96.28 



All grades. 
97.00 



WORDS USED IN THE SPELLING TESTS. 
GRADE 4. SCHOOL B ONLY. 



A, B and 


C refer to the schools tested. The 


numerals (4 to 8) 


refer to the 


grades, -and the 


small letters (a, b, 


c) to different sec- 


tions in the 


grades. 






accident 


excite 


arctic 


nephew 


biscuit 


indolent 


beauty 


fringe 


poultry 


nickname 


canary 


kidnap 


kettle 


separate 


stolen 


oyster 


orchard 


waiter 


walnut 


toilet 


subtract 


cautious 


package 


yield 


aloud 


goldenrod 


timid 


dainty 


decimal 


kennel 


bashful 


husband 


imitate 


oblige 


exact 


lizard 


mayor 


rhyme 


jostle 


needle 




GRADE 5. SCHOOL A, 5 b. 




The same 


words were used 


in 5 a, except that 


jxiriah was substi- 


tuted for parrot. 






surname 


stirred 


believe 


moat 


protection 


recovery 


typewriter 


harvest 


auction 


courage 


numerator 


gild 


drudgery 


separate 


eyelash 


wildcarrot 


musician 


ostrich 


crystal 


caterpillar 


invitation 


February 


gauze 


pedal 


woodchuck 


cellar 


parrot 


bruise 


chaise 


arc 


chariot 


possessive 


abandon 


lantern 


resign 


subtraction 


escort 


business 


lea 


falsehood 



32 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



GRADE 5. SCHOOL B. 

The first fifteen words of School A, grade 5, above, were used, and 
the following: 



divine 


minstrel 


everything 


harvest 


entice 


vegetable 


tortoise 


industry 


overcoat 


alcove 


crammed 


knowledge 


parasol 


jovial 


chariot 


bulb 


quay 


corridor 


ballast 


partridg« 


leopard 


area 


liariwon 


pavilion 


cistern 










GRADE 5. 


SCHOOL C 





Most of the above words in Schools A and B, grade 5, and the fol- 
lowing: scythe, column, geranium, calyx, parish, fractional, icicle, 
lightening. 





GRADE 6. SCHOOLS A and B. 




majority 


stencil 


scenery 


colonist 


national 


emery 


superb 


exploration 


government 


prophecy 


frothy 


preface 


courteous 


betray 


benzine 


paragraph 


brilliant 


drench 


kerosene 


interrogative 


ambitious 


radiator 


fertilizer 


italic 


entrance 


BcufHe 


converse 


tributary 


shrinkage 


radius 


terrier 


mistletoe 


customary 


mimic 


straighten 


smilax 


absent 


marriage 


scheme 


numerical 




GRADE 6. 


SCHOOL C. 




automobile 


calvary 


pewter 


diamond 


magnificent 


palatial 


caramel 


miner 


genial 


construction 


juice 


percentage 


acquaintance 


ravine 


regal 


attribute 


surgeon 


tact 


bassock 


raiser 


honorary 


assistance 


mohair 


mucilage 


caucus 


trustworthy 


assess 


stationery 


acquire 


biscuit 


obscure 


calendar 


glacial 


doily 


peninsula 


skein 


ancesitor 


eyelet 


tedious 


barnacle 


invalid 


embroidery 


masculine 


withhold 


cutler 


colander 


creditor 





IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



GRADE 7. Schools A and B. 



present 


infinitive 


monarchy 


bilious 


wrought 


architecture 


masquerade 


prospective 


gigantic 


stockade 


tonsil 


giraffe 


weighty 


veteran 


impossible 


decimal 


unwelcome 


accomplished 


biscuit 


duchess 


tragedy 


champion 


besieged 


venom 


reservoir 


scientific 


valiant 


militia 


sensitive 


obelisk 


gesture 




chandelier 


insipid 


militia 





School A, h used the following additional words: acquit, sediment, 
delicious, perceive, courtesy, achieve, subtile, while A, a, and B, a, b, 
and c selected from the following: intrench, mercenary, duplicate, 
forfeit, soldier, metropolis, quadrille, parquet, avalanche, cancel, vul- 
ture. 

GRADE 7. SCHOOL C, a, b, and c. 



oracle 


transitive 


vindicate 


shampoo 


frontier 


impede 


liberal 


profile 


vehicle 


partial 


principle 


ledger 


caboose 


contour 


consider 


autograph 


burrow 


visible 


obstinate 


pendulum 


quantity 


humidity 


concede 


circular 


burlap 


provincial 


surpass 


irritate 


fugitive 


grocer 


spouse 


goggles 


dishonor 


ammonia 


transfer 


maxim 


active 


designate 


gouge 


capitol 


volatile 


baritone 


couch 


conquest 


converse 


cartridge 


bodice 


sculptor 


abolish 


torpedoes 








GRADE 8. 


SCHOOL B. 




persistence 


bronchitis 


tabernacle 


refrigerator 


explicit 
affidavit 


requisite 


guttural 


insolvent 


efficacious 


discordant 


visible 


veracity 


hydrogen 


alien 


wondrous 


scrutiny 


corpuscle 


pamphlet 


recreant 


hospital 


incisors 


graduate 


sirens 


development 


enthusiasm 


kindergarten 


rioter 


comrades 


augment 


affirmative 


delineate 


children's 


deficit 


iUegal 


barometer 


valvular 


exodua 


chiffonier 


enyclopedia 




GRADE 8. 


SCHOOL A. 





Those in B and the following additional words were used : remedies, 
attendant, synopsis, diversity, feign, competitor, charade, spherical, 
variable, artesian. 



34 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



GRADE 8. SCHOOL C. 



secession 


capacity 


centennial 


lariat 


Americanized 


calcimined 


quartette 


contagious 


republic 


mosaic 


uncouth 


disinfectant 


questionable 


glazier 


pedestriaua 


chemistry 


sagacity 


seraph 


naturalized 


magnesium 


intolerant 


modulation 


occasion 


glycerine 


emperor 


plenteous 


culinary 


drama 


consistent 


promiscuous 


suspicion 


epitaph 


royalist 


changeable 


subordinate 


stenographer 


appraise 


carmine 


emphatic 


preservation 


accessible 


vermilion 


mandate 


compartment 


boundary 


pheasant 


precedent 


delinquent 


aquarium 


plover 







The Avords used for the fifth grades were studied during the 
October-November assignment ; those for the sixth, seventh and eighth 
grades of Schools A and B were studied during September and Oc- 
tcber, and of School C during October and November. 



Fifty words were spelled in all the grades of school C ; and 
fort}' in schools A and B, except in the eighth grade of school 
A, where fifty were spelled, and the three seventh grade classes 
of school B, and section h of school A, where forty-four were 
used, and section a of the seventh grade of school A, where 
fifty words were spelled. The results for the seventh grade 
of school A are slightly too low, as some of the markers graded 
on the basis of forty words and others on the basis of all 
the words used. The correction of these slight inaccuracies 
would not have modified the final results to any appreciable 
extent. 

The dictated compositions were identical in the following 
schools, grades and sections : In school B, grade 4, a and h. 
In school A, 5, a and 6. In school C, 5, a and h. In school 
C, 5, a and l. In schools A and B, grade 6, a and I. In 
school C, 6, a and c. In schools A, '7, a and h, and B, a, b and 
r. In school C, 7, a, h, and c. In schools A and B, 8. In all 
other cases the compositions differed in context, but the grad- 
ing was based on the same lists of words (the lists given 
above). 

The number of pupils tested in the column and composition 
exercises does not precisely correspond because some of the 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 35 

pupils were absent on one of the test days. This slight un- 
avoidable irregularity will not, it is believed, alter the final 
averages to any appreciable extent. 

I. The degree of spelling proficiency shoivn irre- 
spective of the question of transfer. — The general 
average for all schools is 97%. The lowest building 
average (the general average of all grades tested 
in one building) was 93.7%, and the highest 98.43%— 
a difference of 4.73%. The lowest grade average 
(the general average of all sections of the same 
grade for all buildings) was 96.31%, fifth grade, and 
the highest 97.03%, seventh grade — a difference of 
only .72%. This, however, is exclusive of the fourth 
grade, 98.40%, in which only 72 pupils in one school 
were tested. If these are considered, the range of 
variation is 2.09%. The lowest grade average in a 
single building is 90.63 7o, in the fifth grade of school 
A, and the highest 99.36% in the fifth grade of school 
B — a difference of 8.73%. The lowest average for 
any single section of any grade of the three schools 
is 87.81, in section b of the fifth grade of school A, 
and the highest 99.97%, in section b of the fifth 
grade of school B—a difference of 12.16%. The cor- 
responding extremes in the composition series alone 
are 84.41%, (5«, school ^), and 99.99% (for forty- 
three pupils in 5b, school B) — a difference of 
15.58%; and for the column tests, 91.22% {5a, A) 
and 99.96% {5b, B)—Si difference of 8.74%. The 
greatest section difference, i. e., between the aver- 
ages of the two or three sections of the same grade, 
irrespective of the school, is 15.58% (between 5a, 
composition, school A, and 5b, composition, B), and 
the smallest variation .03% {Sa and b, column test, 



36 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

school B) — a range of 15.55%. In 4rt and h, column 
test, school B, the difference is only .05% ; in C, Sa 
and h, composition test, .09% ; and in B, 8« and h, 
composition test, 10%. The greatest difference be- 
tween different sections of the same grade in the 
same building is 6.52% (sections a and b of grade 
five, school A). These facts furnish data for several 
important deductions. 

First, the general spelling efficiency for all schools 
shown (97%) is striking. It is 12.6% higher than 
Kratz's results (84.4%, for the fourth to eighth 
grades, inclusive), 25% higher than Chancellor's 
(72%, for 10,000 pupils from the fourth to eighth 
grade), 25.48% higher than the results in Rice's 
column test (71.52%), which consisted of a list of dic- 
tated words, and 22.42% higher than the results 
from his sentence test, which consisted of dictated 
sentences containing 50 test words for the fourth and 
fifth grades, and 75 words for the sixth, seventh 
and eighth grades. It eclipses by 25.7% Corn- 
man's average^ in three term examinations during 
three years for eighty Philadelphia schools (71.37o), 
and is 27% higher than the results of these examin- 
ations in his two experimental schools (70%), in 
which the spelling instruction was incidental. In 
four column tests given to these two schools from 
September to June and consisting of lists of fifty 
words differing from grade to grade, the averages 
were 33%, 49%, 50% and 50% respectively for one 
school, and 49, 57, 60 and 68% for the other; while 

^ Oornman's figures are based upon the median instead of the aver- 
age. It has been shown in other experiments that the medians and 
averages do not always coincide, but that they tend to do so in the 
latter part of practice series. Sometimes the difference is very con- 
siderable. Whether the median is a more valuable measure of typical 
results 'than the the mean needs to be de-termined with more accur- 
acy (12: pp. 248, 2gi). 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 37 

the repetition of Rice's column and sentence tests 
gave an average efficiency in 1897 of 78.9% in one 
school, and 67.1% in the other, and in 1898 73.1% 
and 65.4% respectively, for the column test. The 
corresponding averages for the sentence test were: 
82.3 and 74.6% in 1897, and 76.5 and 77.9% in 1898. 
It will be observed that there was a loss of efficiency 
in 1898 except in the case of the sentence test for 
one school. 

Fortunately these results are comparable because 
they are based upon the same fundamental method: 
an arbitrarily selected list of words unannounced 
to the pupils. The contrast with the Cleveland 
results is most striking. Nowhere can our degree 
of efficiency be paralleled in Rice's and Cornman's 
tests, except in their composition tests and in Corn- 
man's series of spontaneously spelled words (the 
pupils wrote during fifteen minutes as many words 
as came into their minds). In Rice's composition 
tests the pupils reproduced a story read to them, 
or wrote original stories about pictures shown to 
them, while in Cornman's they wrote compositions 
and papers in answer to questions in geography, 
history, language and elementary science. With, 
these tests Rice's efficiencies varied from 99.6 to 
95.9%, and Cornman's results for eight tests in one 
of the experimental schools averaged 97.8% ; and 
for ten tests in the other school, 96.7%. In the 
three tests given during three successive years on 
spontaneously written word lists the general aver- 
age for one of these schools was 95%. 

There are reasons why the latter tests cannot be 
compared with the other tests of these writers or 
with our own and why no significant conclusions 



38 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

can be deduced from them. First of all, the range 
of words used was probably not broad enough to 
genuinely test spelling efficiency — at least the tests 
furnish no guarantee that it was, and Rice, by impli- 
cation if not expressly, concedes that there is a 
point to this criticism. The words used were prob- 
ably ordinary, familiar or simple words, or tech- 
nical words frequently recurring in the lessons. On 
this point the published records give no informa- 
tion. Moreover, in some of these tests the child 
had carte blanche in the matter of the selection of 
the words: he was free to choose his own words. 
It is obvious that the ordinary child in such a sit- 
uation would select words which were familiar and 
which could be readily spelled and easily written, 
in preference to unusual, or difficult words, or words 
of uncertain orthography. This would tend to 
cramp his vocabulary in the interest of correct 
orthography — a situation indeed found to be true 
in a mass of correspondence examined by Chancel- 
lor (4). Even when reproducing stories read to 
them the children would tend — and the records do 
not show that they did not — to substitute synonymous 
words for words difficult to remember or hard to 
spell; and I presume that an exact literal reproduce 
tion was the exception rather than the rule, except 
where the stories were dictated phrase by phrase. 
Some such conclusion as this seems almost inescap- 
able. Else why the enormous difference between 
the spelling efficiency in the column, sentence and 
composition tests? Why the extraordinary effi- 
ciency shown in Rice's picture-story test (99.3%), 
in which the pupils controlled absolutely the choice 
of words? The unusual efficiency of the eighth 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 39 

grade pupils in the test on spontaneously written 
words, 99%, also indicates as much. The more 
mature pupils would naturally exercise more judg- 
ment in selecting their words. They would hesi- 
tate to write words they did not know how to spell, 
particularly if they had any sort of suspicion that 
attention would be paid to the spelling by the exam- 
iners and particularly if the custom prevailed in 
these schools of correcting the spelling of the writ- 
ten work. It does not seem therefore that tests of 
this nature have any particular virtue, or the vir- 
tues claimed for them. It is difficult to see how 
they represent the complex life situations more 
faithfully than dictated lists or compositions; for 
it is precisely the lack of the freedom to choose 
the words of his own preference that character- 
izes the work of the stenographer, transcriber and 
amenuensis; and it is just an impoverished vocab- 
ulary that a virile writer must shun. If we would 
arrive at any valid conclusion as to methods of 
teaching spelling (the drill or the incidental) we 
seem justified therefore in barring these tests. 

But objections may be lodged against the legiti- 
macy of our own tests. It will be well to anticipate 
and answer these. 

(1) It may be urged that the words used were 
not sufficiently difficult. The words are a matter 
of record (see pp. 31-34). Many of them were spe- 
cially selected because the children had tended to 
misspell them in the past. Comparison with the 
lists of words used in the tests given by Kratz, 
Rice and Cornman will show that they compare 
very favorably in difficulty. Some of the lists are 
considerably more difficult than Kratz 's or Rice's. 



40 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

Cornman's "review list of difficult words," how- 
ever, is fully as difficult and is more extensive (four 
tests). 

(2) Since our tests were given to three schools 
only there is no guarantee that they are typical. 
Fortunately we are in a position to determine the 
rank of these schools relative to the other schools 
in the system, from the official report of the super- 
visor of spelling for the two eighth-week interschool 
contests covering the same words. School A, it 
appeared, occupied the 38th, B the third, and C the 
28th rank among somewhat less than one hundred 
schools. Accordingly these were neither the best 
nor the worst of the Cleveland schools in spelling 
efficiency, so far as this particular list of words is 
concerned. The three together would take rank 
with the first third. Moreover, while the average 
number of words misspelled per pupil for all the 
schools of the city in these two contests was 1.235 
and 1.698 respectively, the poorest school did not 
fall below 5.284 words per child in the November 
contest, nor below 5.897 in the January contest. 
Furthermore, since the best building averages in 
these contests were .059 and .236 words misspelled 
per pupil, the range of variation amounted to only 
5.227 and 5.661 words between the best and poorest 
building averages. For our three schools the vari- 
ation between the building averages amounted to 
4.73%. These figures are less than the variations 
found by Eice between eighteen schools (from his 
Table No. 2), which were 28.2% for the column test 
(from 92.7 to 64.5%) and 7.4% for the sentence tests 
(from 79.4 to 727©) ; and are about as small as his 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GKADE AND SEX. 41 

variations between city averages. With the sen- 
tence test his variation was 3.3% between seven 
cities (from 76.87 to 73.5%); with the column test, 
4.2% for twelve cities (74.8 to 70.6%); and with 
the composition test, 4.6% for fifteen cities (77.9 
to 73.3%). That the variation in Cleveland is so 
small not only indicates the utility of the "spell- 
ing grind" in vogue there, but that our results from 
the three schools tested may be considered fairly 
representative of the system at large. Even if allow- 
ance is made for the fact that the three test schools 
belong to the upper third in efficiency, the record 
of the poorest school (it was the same one in both 
of the interschool contests) is not nearly so low as 
to reduce the results to the level of efficiency shown 
in Eice's and Cornman's column and sentence tests. 
Finally it should be remarked that the results which 
we have shown in this test are not extremes of the 
spelling work done recently in Cleveland. They have 
been duplicated in the interschool contests during the 
last three years. 

(3) It may be objected that our results are based 
on test words that had been recently drilled. This, 
of course, is a circumstance of moment. Our words 
had been drilled or reviewed not more than about 
three months before the test. Obviously the effi- 
ciency will be higher on recently studied words 
than those remotely studied. To this criticism a 
couple of replies are pertinent. In the first place, 
the published records of the other investigators 
throw no light whatever upon this problem. Un- 
doubtedly some of the words given in their column, 
sentence and composition tests had been recently 
attended to or studied: to what extent cannot be 



42 SPELLING EFFICIEISrCY. 

even approximately deduced from the records. It 
is manifest that in the composition tests — the 
papers in geography, science, etc. — many of the 
words had to be especially attended to day by day. 
Nor can we determine from those tests to what 
extent the words had occurred in specific spelling 
lessons. In a word, then, for the Cleveland tests 
we can say almost precisely what the conditions of 
recency were, but must make such suppositions as 
seem warranted for the other tests. 

Furthermore, there is no known immunity against 
forgetfulness : it is one of the most persistent traits 
of consciousness. Not only do memory images 
grow faint with the lapse of time (and spelling 
offers no exception), but habits likewise disintegrate. 
Perhaps there is no habit in the whole field of sen- 
sory, intellectual or motor automatisms that can 
be so well organized and integrated that it will not 
disintegrate more or less if all repetition or prac- 
tice is abandoned — whether the habit pertains to 
the art of piano playing, legerdemain, writing, pro- 
nouncing, adding, subtracting, or spelling. Habits 
perhaps can never be made as stable as reflexes (so 
Titchener). This is an ultimate that any method 
will have to reckon with, and it constitutes a defect 
that cannot be laid at the door of any particular 
method. Its roots lie deep in the nervous sub- 
stratum of the psychic life. Nevertheless, it can 
be confidently affirmed that those habits which have 
been thoroughly ingrained will resist decay longer 
than those which have been only partially solidified, 
or which have been loosely organized by slip-shod 
methods. A completely formed habit is relatively, 
if not absolutely, stable. And it is the claim of the 



IN RELATION TO AGE^ GRADE AND SEX. 43 

advocate of the drill that a proper drill technique, 
consistently applied, will engender a grade of habit 
organization unattainable by the incidental method 
of instruction or the incidental method of engen- 
dering automatic control of mental tools. The drill 
is no panacea for forgetfulness. But for mechan- 
ical and invariable subject-matter it is the best 
remedy at our command, particularly if the proc- 
ess is strongly motivated by felt needs to solve prac- 
tical problems; that is, if the child has been made 
to feel that his problems can best be solved by devel- 
oping automatic precision of response through a 
thoroughgoing drill technique. 

It appears therefore that our tests amply dem- 
onstrate the superior value of a skillful spelling 
drill technique for developing orthographic excel- 
lence, and signally refute the assertion that metliod 
in teaching spelling is of no consequence, being at 
most a subordinate incident. This conclusion will 
be further buttressed by a consideration of the rec- 
ords in regard to 

II. The relation of spelling efficiency to the grade. 
— The variation from grade to grade in our results 
is so slight as to be practically negligible, amount- 
ing to only .72%, or if we include the fourth grade, 
2.12% (from 98.4 to 96.28%). The contrast with 
Eice's and Cornman's figures arrests attention. In 
Rice's column test the difference between the 4th 
and 8th grades amounted to 30.7% (from 84.2 to 
53.5%); and in the sentence test, 20.2% (from 84.4 
to 64.2%). It must be borne in mind that these dif- 
ferences are between the general averages for 
twenty-one cities in the first test, and eight in the 
second, and that the variations between the gross 



44 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

averages between whole city systems will very prob- 
ably be less than between individual buildings. In 
one of Cornman's term examinations for eleven 
schools the variation between the 3d and 7th grades 
is 16.2% (from 75.8 to 59.6%); and in another, 
given to the third to the seventh grades of fifty 
buildings, it is 5.6% (a reduction owing to the mass- 
ing of many averages, as suggested above). When 
he gave Eice's column test in 1898 to one of the 
experimental schools the difference was 27.2 7o (from 
93.7 to 66.5%); and with the sentence test, 9.9% 
from 90.6 to 80.7%). In the four tests based on 
a selected list of difficult words, the greatest differ- 
ence was 49% (from 74 to 25%) in one school, and 
36% in the other (from 82 to 46%). Even in one 
of the tests based on the spontaneously written 
words the difference amounted to 10% (from 99 to 
89%). It is only in the latter and in the composi- 
tion tests that the small grade variation which we 
have found is equaled. 

By analyzing Table I. it will be seen that most 
of these differences are larger than our differences 
between the poorest and best grades of a single 
building (8.73%), or the poorest and best single 
sections in any one of the schools (12.16%), or be- 
tween the different sections of the same grade in all 
the buildings (15.58%). 

How may this greater uniformity in spelling effi- 
ciency between the various grades of the schools 
studied in our investigation be explained? Partly, 
by the fact that we used different lists of words 
for the different grades, the lists for the lower 
grades containing orthographically simpler words 
than those for the higher. This is true in general, 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX, 45 

but there are exceptions. Various words given to 
the lower grades recurred in the higher grades. Per- 
tinent as is this suggestion, the data indicate (that 
this is only one of the contributing causes. For, 
while Rice's tests were based upon precisely the 
same words for all classes (except the composition 
and story tests), and thus give the comparative effi- 
ciency of the different grades as measured by the 
same standard, Cornman used a graded series of 
words in his 1898 and 1899 column tests, which gen- 
erally increased in difficulty from grade to grade, 
and in these tests his variation in the two experi- 
mental schools in which the incidental method was 
used is the greatest on record. Even in some of 
the tests where the pupils wrote the words of their 
choice the variation is greater than our general 
grade differences. In the light of these facts, the 
conclusion seems inescapable: the slight variation 
in spelling efficiency which we find between the vari- 
ous elementary grades is a function of method tech- 
nique — not a function of method solely, to be sure, 
but, so far as our data indicate, to a very consider- 
able extent. The importance of method for the nor- 
mal child takes creditable rank alongside of such 
factors as a native "talent," or "knack" or "capa- 
city" for spelling, or a native spelling perverseness 
or incorrigibility. In cases where there is a pro- 
nounced spelling defect, due to cortical lesions or 
lack of cerebral development, improvement of 
method must, on the psychical side, take rank with 
prophylactic and remedial treatment on the physi- 
ological side. (This conclusion will be found to har- 
monize with the judgments of the teachers, as 
reported in Chapter V). 



46 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

In our own tests, while the differences are small, 
as just shown, the fourth grade occupies the highest 
rank, followed by the 7th, 6th, 5th and 8th in the 
order named. The order of efficiency found by Rice 
in the column test is : 8th, 7th, 6th, 5th and 4th grade 
(same by Cornman) ; and in the sentence test it is 
8, 7, 5, 6, 4. Cornman 's order of proficiency in one 
of the term tests for eleven schools is : 7 , 6, 5, 3b, 3a 
4a and 46; in the sentence test: 8, 4rt, 5b, 7, 6a, 5a 
and 4«; in the average of three composition tests 
for three years: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3; in the column test 
with words of varying difficulty: 3rt, 3b, 4a, 8, 4:b, 7, 
6b, 5a and b, and 6; in the 1900 term examination 
for 50 schools: 4, 3, 7, 5, and 6; in the same test in 
1899 for 19 schools : 6, 4, 3, 7, and 5 ; and in the lists 
of spontaneously written words: 8, 7, 6, 5a, 4a, 4:b, 
5b, ob and 3a. These figures are complete enough 
to show that there is not a regular improvement 
from grade to grade, except in the composition tests, 
the lists of spontaneously written words, and in the 
column and sentence tests in which all the grades 
were given the same words. Measured by an abso- 
lute, or at least a uniform, standard, Cornman 's 
and Rice's results evince an improvement from year 
to year, though the figures do not indicate that it 
is gradual. Nor do Cornman 's and my own results 
for graded lists of words, differing for each grade, 
show improvement that is strictly regular. Corn- 
man finds his highest efficiencies in the third and 
fourth grades, while mine occur in the fourth. This 
may be due to the simplicity of the words used in 
these grades, or it may indicate that we have at this 
period a spelling stage in the child's development, 
a stage in which his memory for word forms attains 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



47 



a high degree of efficiency. If so, it would seem that 
advantage should be taken of this fact by empha- 
sizing spelling in the program in these grades. 

One point of interest is Cornman's observation 
that the fifth grade is a pons asinorum in the 
matter of spelling. The above figures showing 
the order of ranking, as will be seen, are not con- 
clusive upon this point. Another means by which 
the question may be settled is to find the amount 
of irregularity within each grade. The following per 
cents, indicate the range between the best and the 
poorest averages attained in each grade. The 
grades which show the least variation come first. 

Eice's figures: 



Column Test. 

(Averages for 21 Cities.) 

Per cent. 



Sentence Test. 

Eight City Averages 

Per cent. 



Column Test. 

(Averages of Individual 

Schools.) 

Per cent. 



Grade 7__Range 14.7 
8-- " 15.9 
" 5 & 6- " 19. 
4-_ " 37.9 



Grade 5 6.9 Grade 8 Range 15. 

" S- 8.8 " 7___. " 22. 

" 4_ 11.6 " 6- " 32. 

" 7— -11.9 " 5-— " 39.5 

" 6— -12.1 " 4- " 62. 



Sentence Tests. 

(Individual Schools. ) 

Per cent. 



Composition Test. 

(Individual Schools.) 

Per cent. 



Cornman's Term Examination 

for 50 Schools. 

Per cent. 



Grade 8 14.4 

" 5 17.2 

" 7 20.5 

" 6 23. 

" 4 26.6 



Grade 8 .7 

" 7 1.2 

" 6 1.6 

" 5 1.8 

" 4 2.4 



Grade 7 Range 25.2 

" 4 " 29.4 

" 6 " 31. 

" 5 " 39.1 

" 3 " 42.3 



I have calculated the M. V., which give a measure 
of irregularity between the items of a group, for 
each of the grades in my own tests. The M. V. is 
based on all the sections of a grade in all schools 



48 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

and in the column and composition test. The results 
are as follows : .65 for the 6th grade, 1.47 for the 
8th, 1.63 for the 7th, and 4.10 for the fifth. In our 
results we find in the fifth grade the largest M. V. ; 
also both the lowest and highest average for any 
grade in any building; the poorest as well as the 
best single section in any grade; and the greatest 
difference between the different sections of the same 
grade in the same building or in any of the three 
(the corresponding minimal differences being in the 
fourth and eighth grades). 

My own results, therefore, based upon the grade 
of proficiency, the amount of irregularity, and the 
grade of efficiency of the normal or on-time pupils 
(see the following chapter, particularly Table X., 
where the pupils have been grouped into slow, fast 
and on-time sections), are in accord with Cornman's 
conclusions regarding the fifth grade. But it is note- 
worthy that this grade is not always the most irreg- 
ular in Rice's results. We must conclude, I believe, 
that there is at least an element of uncertainty or 
irregularity in the spelling work of the fifth grade, 
which requires further study. 

As between the lower and upper grades, the regu- 
larity is apparently greater for the grammar grades. 
But there is danger of dogmatizing on this point, 
because the records show various discrepancies. The 
eighth grade seems to possess the strongest claims, 
so far as concerns the regularity of the curve of 
efficiency. But even here our results are not in 
entire accord with Rice's or Cornman's: our small- 
est variation is in the 6th grade. However, we shall 
return to the matter of the relation of spelling to the 
grade in the following chapter in discussing the rela- 
tion of spelling to age. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RELATION OF SPELLING EFFICIENCY 

TO SEX AND AGE. 

I. Spelling in relation to sex. — Girls are more pro- 
ficient spellers than boys. The difference between 
the gross averages of all the schools amounts to 
2.10%, as seen in Table VIII. There are only two 
exceptions, the fourth grade of school B, both tests, 

TABLE III. 

GRADE 1. 

Composition Test. (1) 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 


No. 




Per 
cent. 


No. 


2 


Per 

cent. 








H 






S 




B 


8 


1 


1 


97.5 


1 





100.00 




9 


13 


7 


98.65 


20 


10 


98.75 




10 


12 


13 


97.29 


15 


15 


97.5 




11 


2 


n 


100.00 


4 


3 


98.12 




12 


3 


4 


96.66 


1 


4 


90.00 


Ave. 




31 




98.02 


41 




96.87 









Column Test. (2) 





8 
9 
10 
11 
12 


1 

13 
11 
2 
3 



4 
5 


1 


100.00 
99.23 
98.86 

100.00 
99.16 


1 
21 
16 

5 

1 



6 
9 

3 


100. 
99.28 
97.03 

100.00 
92.5 


Ave. _ 




30 
61 




99.45 
98.73 


44 
85 




97.96 


Ave. (1), (2) 




97.41 









50 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



and the seventh grade of school B, both tests. This 
conclusion is in entire accord with Rice's and Corn- 
man's results: both found that the girls outstripped 
the boys. We shall have occasion to recur to this 
again. 

By comparing the various grades it is seen that 
the girls surpass the boys in all except the fourth 
grade, where the boys excell by 1.32%. As will be 
seen from the following figures the girls' superiority 

TABLE IV. 

GRADE 5. 
Composition Test. 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 


No. 


I 


Per 
cent. 


No. 


l 


Per 
cent. 








H 






H 




A 


9 


2 


7 


91.25 


2 


3 


96.25 




10 


10 


67 


83.25 


13 


39 


92.50 




11 


12 


71 


85.20 


6 


24 


90.00 




12 


3 


24 


80.00 


5 


33 


83.50 




13 


3 


21 


82.50 


4 


22 


86.25 




14 


1 


6 


85.00 


2 


16 


80.00 


Ave 




31 
4 





84.53 
100.00 


32 
4 





88.08 


B 


9 


100.00 




10 


14 


4 


99.28 


18 


1 


99.86 




11 


17 


10 


98.52 


14 


7 


98.75 




12 


3 


3 


97.50 


6 


6 


97.50 




13 


1 


1 


97.50 


3 


1 


99.16 




14 










2 





100.00 


Ave. - 




39 
20 


11 


98.56 
98.90 


47 
19 


2 


99.21 


c 


10 


99.78 




11 


10 


17 


96.60 


15 


3 


99.60 




12 


5 


3 


98.80 


2 


2 


98.00 




13 


2 


2 


98.00 


4 


5 


97.50 




14 


1 


1 


98.00 


1 





100.00 


Ave - 




38 
108 




98.06 
93.71 


41 
120 




98.97 


A, B, C- - 




95.42 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



51 



is most marked in the eighth grade and least marked 
in the fifth: 

Superiority of the girls in the 5th grade, 2.01% 
Superiority of the girls in the 6th grade, 2.70% 
Superiority of the girls in the 7th grade, 2.22% 
Superiority of the girls in the 8th grade, 4.90%. 
It is worthy of remark that these results are not 
corroborated by Cornman's findings. In his inves- 
tigation the girls' superiority over the boys was 
most striking in the fourth and fifth school years, 
the years in which they are relatively weakest in 
our tests. 

If we compare the differences between the boys 
and girls in single classes in all the schools, we find 





Column Test (Table IV. 










Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




t 


Per 




o 


Per 






No. 


K 


cent. 


No. 


S 


cent. 


A 


9 


2 


1 


98.75 


1 





100.00 




10 


11 


42 


90.45 


12 


26 


94.58 




11 


12 


44 


90.83 


8 


9 


97.18 




12 


3 


17 


85.83 


5 


11 


94.50 




13 


3 


10 


91.66 


5 


14 


93.00 




14 


1 


3 


92.50 


2 


4 


95.00 


Ave. _ 




32 
2 





91.67 
100.00 


33 
4 





95.71 


B 


9 


100.00 




10 


18 


8 


98.88 


17 


2 


99.70 




11 


17 


1 


99.85 


13 


2 


99.61 




12 


2 


2 


97.50 


7 


2 


99.28 




13 










3 


1 


99.16 




14 











2 





100.00 




















Ave 




39 




99.05 


46 




99.62 








A, B 




71 




95.36 


79 




97.66 








Ave., both tests 




179 




94.53 


199 




96.54 



52 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



the following to be the largest differences: 7.99% in 
school A, grade 7, composition test; 7.37%, in school 
B, grade 8, column test; 7.23%, A, 8, composition; 
6.35%, B, 8, composition; and 4.14% A, 6, composi- 
tion test. Uniformly the largest differences between 
the boys and girls are in the upper grades. Con- 
trariwise the smallest differences, with one excep- 
tion, are in the lower grades : .65%, school B, 5, com- 

TABLE V. 

GRADE 6. 
Composition Test. 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




i 


Per 




t 


Per 






No. 




cent. 


No. 


2 


cent. 


A 


10 


5 


5 


97.50 


1 





100.00 




11 


21 


45 


94.64 


20 


28 


96.50 




12 


6 


22 


90.83 


9 


9 


97.50 




13 


4 


16 


90.00 


8 


13 


95.93 




14 


2 


8 


90.00 


2 


5 


93.75 


Ave 




38 
3 


2 


92.59 
98.33 


40 
4 


1 


96.73 


B 


10 


99.37 




11 


11 


2 


99.54 


10 


7 


98.25 




12 


11 


22 


95.00 


9 


2 


99.44 




13 


11 


12 


97.27 


6 


6 


97.50 




14 


3 


3 


97.50 


2 





100.00 




15 


1 





100.00 













16 


1 


2 


95.00 











Ave. 




41 

1 


3 


97.52 

94.00 


31 







98.91 


C 


10 






11 


15 


26 


96.53 


17 


26 


96'94 




12 


15 


24 


96.80 


12 


21 


96.50 




13 


11 


11 


98.00 


10 


6 


98.80 




14 


8 


21 


94.75 




4 


92.00 




15 


2 


18 


82.00 











Ave 




52 
131 




93.68 
9I59 


40 
111 




96.06 


A, B, C 




97.23 









IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



53 



position test; .57%, B, 5 column; and .56%, B, 7, 
composition. This indicates that as the boys and 
girls grow older the girls outstrip the boys in 
increasing measure. This is no doubt due to the 
fact that the girls in the upper ages (up to sixteen 
in these tests) are physiologically and psychologic- 
ally more mature than the boys. In the lower ages 
the chronological, physiological and psychological 
ages are in closer correspondence. Unfortunately 
there are no data here to show whether the boys 
would recover in the later adolescent or post- 
adolescent years. It is possible that as soon as they 
reach the same plane of maturity as the girls the 
differences may taper off. 



Column Test (Table V.) 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




£ 


Per 




£ 


Per 






No. 




cent. 


No. 




cent. 


A 


10 


4 


2 


98.75 


1 





100.00 




11 


20 


13 


98.37 


21 


12 


98.57 




12 


7 


10 


96.42 


10 


5 


98.75 




13 


4 


3 


98.12 


7 


10 


96.42 




14 


2 


9 


88.75 


2 


1 


98.75 


Ave __ 




37 
3 





96.08 
100.00 


41 
5 


3 


98.49 


B 


10 


98.50 




11 


13 


5 


99.03 


12 


24 


95.00 




12 


10 


33 


91.75 


11 


12 


97.27 




13 


13 


32 


93.85 


5 


5 


97.50 




14 


2 


5 


93.75 


2 


2 


97.50 




15 


1 


5 


87.50 













16 


1 


3 


92.50 











Ave 




43 




94.05 


35 




97.15 








A, B 




80 




95.06 


76 




97.82 








Ave., both tests 




211 




94.82 


187 




97.52 



54 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



There are only three classes in which the boys 
excell the girls : school B, grade four, both tests ; B, 
7, composition test; and B, 7, column test. But if 
the sex differences are studied in relation to 
the nature of the tests, an interesting fact will 
appear; namely, that the superiority of the girls is 
less striking in the composition series than in the 



TABLE VI. 

GRADE 7. 

Composition Test. 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




£ 


Per 




£ 


Per 






No. 


a 


cent. 


No. 




cent. 


A 


11 










2 


7 


91.25 




12 


14 


48 


9T42 


16 


32 


95.00 




13 


7 


22 


92.14 


12 


36 


92.50 




14 


5 


37 


81.50 


1 


5 


87.50 




15 


2 


9 


88.75 


1 


1 


97.50 




16 


1 


4 


90.00 










Ave 




29 
4 


3 


84.76 
98.30 


32 

7 


6 


92.75 


B 


11 


98.05 




12 


18 


11 


98.61 


17 


10 


98.66 




13 


28 


22 


98.21 


18 


10 


98.73 




14 


9 


15 


96.21 


5 


6 


97.27 




15 










2 


2 


97.72 




16 










1 


3 


93.19 


Ave. 




59 
1 


1 


9^83 
98.00 


50 
4 


7 


97.27 


C 


11 


96.50 




12 


8 


12 


97.00 


26 


13 


99.00 




13 


18 


35 


96.11 


19 


19 


98.00 




14 


8 


22 


94.50 


8 


10 


97.50 




15 


1 


3 


94.00 


4 


3 


98.50 




16 










3 


6 


96.00 


Ave. 




36 




95.92 


64 




97.58 








A, B, C 




124 




92.83 


146 




95.86 









IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



55 



column series, with one exception (seventh grade). 
The average superiority of the girls in the column 
tests for all grades, is 3.027o, but for the composi- 
tion series it is 2.89%. It is interesting to note that 
the differences are the greatest in the two upper 
grades, as seen in the following tabulation : — 
Amounts by which the girls surpass the boys : 





In the Composi- 
tion Tests. 
Per cent. 


In the Column 
Tests. 
Per cent. 


Difiference. 
Per cent. 


Grade 5 _ 


1.71 
2.64 
3.03 
4.18 


2.30 
2.76 
1.41 
5.60 


.59 


6 


.12 


" 7 


1.62 


" 8 


1.42 







Column Test (Table VI.) 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




£ 1 


Per 




CO 

o 


Per 






No. 


1 ! 


cent. 




S 1 


cent. 


A 


11 


1 





100.00 


1 





100.00 




12 


13 


16 


96.92 


16 


8 


98.7^ 




13 


6 


9 


96.25 


10 


11 


97.25 




14 


5 


16 


92.00 













15 


2 


3 


96.25 













16 


1 


5 


87.50 























— 




Ave. 




28 
8 


2 


94.82 
98.48 


27 
6 


19 
2 


98.66 


B 


11 


99.23 




12 


19 


9 


98.92 


17 


5 


99.33 




13 


27 


18 


98.48 


16 


4 


99.43 




14 


9 


14 


96.71 


4 


9 


94.88 




15 










1 





100.00 




16 











1 


4 


90.90 


Ave 




58 




98.14 


45 




97.12 








A B - — 




86 




96.48 


72 




97.89 








Ave., both tests 




210 




94.65 


218 




96.87 



56 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY, 



Hence it appears that the girls' superiority is 
mostly on the side of verbal memory, or the mechan- 
ical phases of memorizing. They are less aided by 
the meaning or content; the thoughts in connected 
discourse appear to suggest the spelling more with 
boys than with girls. The results would seem to 
lend experimental verification to the oft-repeated 
dictum, that while girls surpass boys in memory 
work, the boys excell the girls in work requiring 



TABLE VII. 
GRADE 8. 
Composition Test. 





Age. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




i 


Per 




i 


Per 






No. 


J_ 


cent. 


No. 




cent. 


A 


12 


1 


2 


96.00 


2 


1 


99.00 




13 


11 


32 


94.18 


5 


15 


94.00 




14 


9 


40 


91.11 


6 


11 


96.33 




15 


1 


2 


96.00 


6 


27 


91.00 




16 


2 


28 


72.00 











Ave. 




24 
5 


13 


93.50 


19 

6 


6 


95.08 


B 


12 


97.50 




13 


12 


10 


97.91 


16 


9 


98.59 




14 


6 


8 


96.66 


18 


31 


95.69 




15 


2 


17 


78.75 


10 


12 


97.00 




16 


1 


4 


90.00 


1 


1 


97.50 




17 











1 





100.00 


Ave. . 




26 

1 





91.36 
100.00 


52 
3 





97.71 


C 


12 


100.00 




13 


17 


8 


99.05 


10 


2 


99.60 




14 


10 


4 


99.20 


18 


12 


98.66 




15 


11 


11 


98.00 


12 


7 


98.83 




16 


2 


1 


99.00 


2 


7 


93.00 


Ave. 




41 




99.05 


45 




98.01 








A, B, C 




91 




9175 


116 




96.93 









IN KELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



57 



judgment, reasoning, reflection. This is particu- 
larly true, so far as these results indicate, for the 
older boys. 

The greater variability in spelling efficiency which 
we find among boys is in harmony with the fact that 
the psychical variability is greater for boys than 
for girls. The Germans have no name for girl 
prodigy, but they have ''Wunderknabe" and 
"Wunderkind." There are more geniuses and 
prodigies as well as defectives and degenerates in 
the male sex. 





Column Test (Table VII. 


) 








Age, 


Boys. 


Girls. 


School. 




t 


rer 







Per 






No. 


2 


cent. 


No. 


^ 

H 


cent. 


A 


12 


1 





100.00 


2 


2 


98.00 




13 


11 


30 


94.54 


5 


7 


97.50 




14 


9 


22 


95.11 


6 


9 


97.00 




15 


1 


1 


98.00 


6 


21 


93.00 




16 


2 


25 


75.00 











Ave 




24 
5 


11 


92.53 
94.50 


19 
5 


4 


96.37 


B 


12 


98.00 




13 


12 


18 


96.25 


15 


12 


98.00 




14 


6 


3 


98.75 


18 


21 


97.08 




15 


2 


19 


76.25 


11 


13 


97.04 




16 


1 


6 


85.00 


1 


1 


97.50 




17 











1 


1 


97.50 


Ave 




26 




90.15 


51 




97.52 








A, B 




50 




9T34 


70 




96.94 








Ave,, both tests 




141 




92.04 


186 




96.94 



No., total number of pupils (not averages). Errors, 
stated in totals. Per cent, always means per cent, of eflfi- 
ciencv. A. B. C. refers to the three different schools tested. 



58 



SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



II. Spelling in relation to age. — An examination 
of Table IX. would seem to indicate that the younger 
the child the greater is the spelling proficiency. The 
falling oif is regular from grade to grade, with two 
exceptions, the order being: age 8, 9, 11, 10, 13, 12, 
14, 15 and 16 (for details see the Table). The extreme 
variability, between the 9th and 16th years amounts 
to 7% (or 7.74% if we include the 8th year old 
pupils, but there are only four of these). The diifer- 



TABLE VIII. 
SUMMARIES or SEX DIFFERENCES. 





Test. 


Boys. 


Girls. 


Grade. 


No. 


Per 
cent. 


No. 


Per 
cent. 


Fourth.... 
Ave... 


Composition.. 
Column 


31 

30 

61 

108 
71 

179 

131 

80 

211 

124 

86 

210 

91 

50 

141 


98.02 
99.45 

98.73 

93.71 
95.36 

94.53 

94.59 
95.06 

94.82 

92.83 
96.48 

94.65 

92.75 
91.34 

92.04 

94.95 


41 

44 

85 

120 
79 

199 

111 

76 

187 

146 
72 

218 

116 

70 

186 


96.87 
97.96 

97.41 


Fifth 

Ave. 


Composition.- 
Column 


95.42 
97.66 

96.54 


Sixth 

Ave. 


Composition.. 
Column 


97.23 
97.82 

97.52 


Seventh... 
Ave... 


Composition.. 
Column 


95.86 
97.89 

96.87 


Eighth.— 
Ave 


Composition- 
Column 


96.93 
96.94 

96.94 


Ave. 


for all grades. 


97.05 



No., number of pupils (always totals), 
ciency. 



Per cent. = % of effi- 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 



59 



TABLE IX. 



SUMMARIES OF AGE DIFFERENCES. 

Age 8. Age 9. 





Boys. 


Girls. 


Isl 


Boys. 


Girls. 




Grade. 


d 


^'i 


1 


a, a 


i 




d 


l\ 


III 


Fourth 

Fifth 

Ave 


2 


98.75 


2 


100.00 


99.37 


26 
10 


98.94 
97.50 

98.22 


41 
11 


99.01 
99.06 

99.03 


98.97 

98.28 

98.62 







Age 10. 






Age 11. 




Fourth 

Fifth 

Sixth 

Seventh 

Ave 


23 
73 
16 


98.07 
94.15 
97.71 

96.64 


31 
79 
11 


97.26 
97.28 
99.46 

98.00 


97.66 
95.71 
98.58 

97.31 


4 
68 
80 

9 


100.00 
94.20 
97.62 
98.69 

97.63 


9 
56 

80 
20 


99.06 
97.02 
97.05 
97.00 

97.53 


99.53 
95.61 
97.33 
97.84 

97.60 



Age 12. 



Age 13. 



Fourth.. 
Fifth __. 
Sixth __. 
Seventh. 
Eighth-. 



Ave. 



6 


97.91 


7 


91.25 


94.58 










16 


91.92 


25 


94.55 


93.23 


9 


92.41 


19 


95.01 


49 


94.16 


51 


98.29 


96.22 


43 


95.45 


36 


97.23 


72 


96.57 


92 


98.15 


97.3<; 


86 


96.23 


75 


97.18 


13 


96.80 


18 


98.50 


97.65 


63 


96.38 


51 


97.53 




95.47 




96.15 


95.81 




95.12 




96.74 



93.71 

96.34 
96.70 
96.95 



Age 14. 



Age 15. 



Fifth — 
Sixth __. 
Seventh. 
Eighth-. 

Ave... 



3 


91.83 


9 


95.00 


93.41 










17 


92.95 


9 


96.40 


94.67 


4 


89.83 






36 


92.18 


18 


94.29 


93.23 


5 


93.00 


8 


98.43 


40 


96.16 


66 


96.95 


96.55 


17 


89.40 


45 


95.37 




93.28 




95.66 


94.46 




90.74 




96.90 



89.83 
95.71 
92.38 



Age 16. 



Sixth.-, 
Seventh. 
Eighth - 



Ave. 



2 
2 

8 


93.75 

88.75 
84.20 

88.90 


"5 
4 


93'36 
96.00 

94.68 


93.75 
91.05 
90.10 

91.63 











Ave., average for both sexes. 



60 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

ences between the successive years are as follows: 
.75%, 1.31%, .29%, 1.79%, .11%, 1.31%, 1.82% and 
1.01%. In no case do tliey exceed 2%, so that the 
variation from year to year is small. 

Comparing the efficiencies for the boys and girls at 
various ages, we find that the boys are inferior for 
every age except the 11th (where the difference is 
only .11%). This confirms the conclusion already 
reached in respect to grade differences between the 
. sexes. The amount of the differences for the various 
ages, exclusive of the eighth and eleventh, are as 
follows: .S17c, 1.36, .68, 1.62, 2.38, 6.16 and 5.787^. 
Here it will be seen that the maximum variation 
between the sexes is quite considerable, over 6% (in 
the fifteenth year). The differences are most strik- 
ing for the three higher years, 14, 15 and 16 (the 
details may, again, be found in the Table). 

The above figures may, obviously, be somewhat 
deceptive, because it usually happens that a given 
age spreads through several grades. For example: 
twelve-year old pupils are found in all the grades 
from the fourth to the eighth inclusive, and the six- 
teen-year olds in grades six to eight, so prevalent 
are the retarded and accelerated pupils. Since some 
of the pupils are excessively retarded and some are 
accelerated, it will be necessary, in order to obtain 
a just basis of comparison, to group the pupils in 
each grade into three divisions: (1) those who are 
accelerated or under-age; (2) those who are on time 
or normal; and (3) those who are retarded or over- 
age. Such a grouping appears in Table X. 

It will be observed that two ages are averaged in 
the '^ normal age" column. This is due to the fact 
that children enter the first year in the Cleveland 
schools both in September and February. Those 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GEADE AND SEX. 



61 



TABLE X. 

Classification of Pupils into Groups According as Thoy 
Are Normal, Accelerated or Retarded. 
Tourth Grade. 





On Time. 
(Normal Age.) 


Accelerated. 
(Under Age.) 


Retarded. 
(Over Age.) 




<5 


M 


50.0, 


Age. 

Boys. 
Per 
cent. 


PI 


< 


H 


< 




Comp 

Column— 

Ave — 


9 & 10 97.97 
9 & 10 99.04 

98.50 


98.12 
98.15 

98.13 


8 97.5 

slioo.oo 

9875 


100.00 
100.00 

100.00 


11&12 
11&12 


98.33 
99.58 

98.95 


11 & 12'94.06 
11 & 12 96.25 

i95.15 



Fifth Grade. 



Comp |10 

Column__ilO 

Ave.__L_ . 



&11 
&11 



93.62196.72 9 
95.0097.77 9 

94.31197.24 



95.62 
97.37 



97.49 



98.12 
100.00 



99.06 



12, 13 & 14 92.16 
12, 13 & 14 91.87 



92.01 



93.54 
96.82 



95.18 



Sixth Grade. 



Comp 

Column- - 



Ave. 



& 12 95.55 
& 12 96.39 



97.2210 
97.3910 



95.97 97.451 



96.61 
99.37 



99.68 
99.25 



97.99 99.46 



13-16 
13-16 



93.83,13 & 14 
92.41113 & 14 



93.121 



96.33 
97.54 



96.93 







Seventh Grade. 






Comp 

Column— 

Ave.— 


12&13 
12&13 


95.58 96.9811 
97.64 98.69 11 

96.61 97.83 


98.15 
99.24 

98.69 


95.26 
99.61 

97.43 


14-16 
14-16 


190.821 14-16 
93.I1I 14-16 

91.96 


95.64 
95.26 

95.45 











Eighth Grade. 








Comp 

Column-. 


13&14 
13&14 


96.35 
96.16 


97.14 
97.39 


12 
12 


96.50 
97.25 


98.50 
98.00 


15-16 
15-16 


88.96 
83.56 


15-17 
15-17 


96.06 
96.00 


Ave.- 




96.25 


97.26 




96.87 


98.25 




86.26 




96.03 


Gen. Ave. 




96^2 


97.58 




97.95 


98.84 




92.46 




95.74 



96.95 



98.39 



94.10 



Comp., composition tests. Column, column tests. 



62 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

who are not six in September must wait till Febru- 
ary. Accordingly two ages represent the normal 
throughout the course. The table reveals a number 
of significant facts. 
\ An examination of the on-time column shows not 
only that the spelling efficiency is remarkably con- 
stant, but that the apparent decline of efficiency 
from grade to grade, to which we directed attention 
above, is due to averaging the results of pupils of 
different ages in the same grade. This practice is 
questionable because the holdovers, who are lag- 
gards, will outnumber the accelerated or over-bright, 
and thus tend to distort the normal curve by pro- 
ducing a fall with increase of grade. As will be seen 
in a moment, the variability for the laggards is also 
greater. The typical results, therefore, must be 
based upon the normal children; that is, those who 
keep up with the normal procession, who arrive on 
time. When the on-time pupils are considered sep- 
arately it is seen from the table that the spelling 
proficiency tends to increase rather than decrease 
from grade to grade (the two exceptions are the 
fourth and eighth grades). 

When the proficiencies of the normal pupils are 
compared with the accelerated (under-age), it is 
seen that the latter spell better than the former in 
every grade (the girls of the seventh grade ex- 
cepted). The difference between the general aver- 
ages for all grades is 1.44%, while the largest dif- 
ference is 3.18%, for the boys in the fifth grade. On 
the other hand, the over-age pupils are inferior to 
the normal all along for both boys and girls except 
for the boys in grade four. Here the difference be- 
tween the general averages is larger, 2.85%, the 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 63 

largest difference being about 10% (boys of grade 
eight). That is, the variation of the retarded pupils 
from the normal efficiency is greater than the varia- 
tion of the accelerated. The over-age pupils are 
more pronouncedly inferior to the ontime or typical 
child than the accelerated or under-age is superior.^ 
The possible range downward is greater than the 
range upward. The difference between the aver- 
ages for the accelerated and retarded amounts to as 
much as 4.29%. 

It is noticeable that the differences are again more 
pronounced for the boys than for the girls. For 
the boys the variation between the on-time and 
under-age amounts to 1.63%, and between the on- 
time and over-age, 3.86%; while the correspond- 
ing differences for the girls are 1.26 and 1.84%. 
This sustains the conclusion already reached. In 
spelling girls appear clearly to excel, but to a less 
degree in composition spelling than column spell- 
ing. 

Similar results have been obtained by Rice. His 
data are based upon a study of the elementary 
grades of a few schools. He divided the pupils in 
each grade into two groups, the younger and the 
older. His groups may correspond to our acceler- 
ated and retarded. He had no normal group. His 
results showed that the younger (under-age) pupils 
spelled better in all grades (four exceptions each 
in the column and composition tests), the differences 
varying all the way from about .5% to 11%. By 
classifying the pupils into four groups according 
to their general intelligence or brightness, it ap- 



^This would probably not be true if the typical children had 
not been brought to a high degree of efficiency. 



64 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

peared that practically all the groups jof bright 
pupils averaged higher than the other groups, the 
differences usually being quite striking. A high or 
low class proficiency in spelling may therefore 
sometimes be explained by the fact that the class 
contains numerous bright or dull pupils. To rightly 
estimate a teacher's ability to instruct and train, 
supervisors' should accordingly base their judgment 
upon the proficiencies displayed by the on-time 
group of children. Perhaps no better criterion by 
which to judge a teacher's efficiency can be found 
than the relative progress made by the normal or 
typical pupils in her class, as compared with a simi- 
lar group in other classes. 



CHAPTER IV. 

DOES SPELLING EFFICIENCY ACQUIRED IN 

COLUMN DRILLS TRANSFER TO 

DICTATED COMPOSITIONS? 

(The Doctrine of Formal Discipline.) 

It was primarily for the purpose of throwing light 
upon this question that the present investigation 
was undertaken under the test conditions which 
have already been described (see Chapter I). The 
data obtained furnishes conclusive evidence in favor 
of an affirmative answer. An analysis of Tables I. 
and II. will reveal a number of important facts. 

Taking the gross results for all schools as a basis 
of comparison, it is seen that the difference between 
the column and composition tests amounts to only 
1.44%. That is to say, the average loss of effi- 
ciency through transfer is so slight as to be almost 
negligible. 

By comparing the results of the two tests for the 
various grades separately, we find the transfer losses 
to be the following: .47% for the eighth grade; 
.93%, sixth grade; 1.26%, fourth grade; 2.25%, sev- 
enth grade; and 2.29%, fifth grade (see Table II.). 
The smallest losses come in the eighth and sixth 
grades, and the largest in the seventh and fifth. 
In the eighth the loss is less than one-half of one 
per cent.; and it is noteworthy that the variation 
between the smallest and largest losses is only 1.87%. 

65 



i56 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

Taking the individual sections as a basis of com- 
parison, it is found that in only five instances do 
the transfer losses exceed 3% : 6.81% (5a, A) ; 6.08% 
{7a, A) ; 5.21% {5b, A) ; 3.66% {eb, A) ; and 3.09% 
(6, all sections, C). It will be observed that all of 
these losses, except one, are in the same school. In 
all other instances in which there are any losses the 
falling off is not very material — in seven instances 
less than 1% (.70%, .14%, .58%, .70%, .06%, .337^, 
.39%.) 

Not only, however, is the transfer loss ordinarily 
small, but it is by no means an invariable phenome- 
non. There are five instances in which there is a 
positive result, an actual transfer gain. These 
gains amounted to .01% {Sa, B), .03% {5b, B), .11% 
{7c, B), A5% {^a, B), and 4.47% (66, 5)— all in 
one school. Here we have instances of a degree of 
spelling efficiency in novel or unpractised situations 
which absolutely surpasses the efficiency shown in 
the familiar, practised situations — a result which is 
analogous to the findings of Fracker in a memory 
experiment (7). He tested before training the 
subjects' ability to memorize poetry, the extent of 
arm movements, and the order in which various 
greys, tones, geometrical figures and numbers were 
presented. Then the subjects practised memoriz- 
ing the order of four tones for some time, where- 
upon they were again tested with the other ma- 
terials which had received no practice. In some 
cases the improvement in the unpractised or test 
series was absolutely greater than in the training 
series. 

We conclude, therefore, that column drills in 
spelling may produce a positive increment of spell- 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 67 

ing efficiency in dictated compositions or connected 
writing. This fact is significant, in view of the 
attacks that have been directed against the spelling 
drill for many years. The advocate of the drill was 
prepared to find some loss through transfer, but he 
had scarcely ventured to look for a positive gain 
when the scoring was based upon the same words. 
A slight transfer loss could be ascribed entirely to 
the increased complications involved in writing dic- 
tated compositions as against writing word lists, 
because in the compositions the pupil would have 
many other words to spell ; he would have to divide 
his attention more or less between the content 
(sense) and form, if for no other reason than to aid 
the memory; he would have to carry whole phrases 
in mind instead of single words; he would have to 
make many writing movements instead of few; 
give some attention to punctuation, capitalization, 
indentation, etc., unless indeed these matters had 
already been reduced to automatic control ; he would 
have to apprehend the words in new relations, among 
new associates, instead of in an artificial sequence 
of isolated and unrelated words. In view of the mul- 
tiplication of work involved in the dictated compo- 
sition test the losses were so immaterial (in no case 
as much as 7%) that they cannot be used as an ar- 
gument against learning spelling in habit-forming 
drills. The spelling proficiency developed in a drill 
situation does transfer to a dictation or composition 
situation. It is not true that words learned in a 
certain column sequence will be spelled correctly 
only when they recur in that sequence. They are 
spelled nearly as well when they come with new and 
rational associates in connected writing; and some- 



68 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

times better. However fundamental the law of as- 
sociation, the principle of dissociation is also oper- 
ative. While the mere repetition of word lists tends 
to form associations between words which have no 
bond save that of arbitrary sequence to link them 
together, in consequence of which the correct spell- 
ing of one word will tend to call up the correct spell- 
ing of other words if they occur in the given series, 
yet the mind abstracts, analyzes and dissociates at 
the same time, so that when the words occur in dif- 
ferent combinations they may still be handled with 
equal or nearly equal proficiency and sometimes with 
increased proficiency. That there should be an ac- 
tual increase of proficiency is, after all, not so sur- 
prising, because when the words occur in meaning- 
ful sequences a new associate is added to further 
the process of recall, namely the element of mean- 
ing. The meaning content will tend to suggest the 
spelling form, because the form is often deliberately 
associated with the meaning, so that when the mean- 
ing is supplied by phrases and sentences the spelling 
will follow as the ''associated" term of the process. 
The meaning of the sentence will, therefore, supply 
the meaning of a given word, and this in turn will 
revive its proper spelling. 

The objection may be forthcoming that these 
striking transfer results are due to a happy cir- 
cumstance in the test conditions: viz., the fact that 
only a few months at the utmost had elapsed be- 
tween the special study of the words and the giv- 
ing of the tests. Obviously if the tests had been 
given after a lapse of several years the proficiency 
might very well have been less — especially if the lists 
contained numerous words of infrequent use. The 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 69 

objection is of no material consequence, however; for 
no matter how large the falling off in proficiency, it 
would have pertained to both series. The efficiency 
would have been lessened in both column and com- 
position work. There is no warrant for assuming 
that the spelling would have deteriorated in con- 
nected writing only; i. e., that the transfer loss 
would have been exaggerated. Assuming the cor- 
rectness of these premises, we may say, then, that 
no matter what the extent of the loss through lapse 
of time, it cannot be regarded as a transfer loss. 
Consequently the objection simply reduces to this: 
after the lapse of a year or more the ability to spell 
neglected, difficult or unusual words is lessened. 
When stated in this form, it will be seen that the ob- 
jection has already been met (p. 42) : while a skill- 
ful spelling drill is not an unfailing cureall for the 
forgetfulness of word forms, it does insure a meas- 
ure of habituation or organized stability that can- 
not be reached by teaching spelling in a merely inci- 
dental way (which in many cases means perfunc- 
tory). 

It is pertinent to restate that the spelling drill 
in use in Cleveland involves a certain amount of 
dictation work as a regular feature, so that the 
pupils were familiar with the demand that the words 
focalized in the drill proper be spelled correctly in 
connected discourse; and that an insistence upon 
teaching spelling in drills does not necessitate the 
supplanting or elimination of the incidental method. 
The two methods are not antithetical or mutually 
exclusive, but supplementary. A drill that bars the 
correlation of spelling teaching with the written 
work of the schools stands self-condemned. This is 



70 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

not because spelling efficiency cannot be attained by 
such a drill, but because it would test knowledge 
merely by the method of formal reproduction, in- 
stead of the more vital method of use or application. 
It would devitalize the process, unless extrinsic in- 
centives were added to infuse energy into the tech- 
nique. Learning becomes most natural and eco- 
nomical when it is motivated by a need that arises 
out of the pupil's own experience. Such a need is 
intrinsic and dynamic, instead of extrinsic and aca- 
demic. To experience a need the pupil must first 
be made to feel privation or want. It is the lack 
of a contemplated good that stimulates the desire 
for it. The feeling of want, desire, need, can best 
be aroused in the pupil by confronting him with nat- 
ural situations or problems, i. e., problems which 
arise in the course of his regular occupations, plays, 
or studies. When the child has a composition, or 
letter, or theme, or a narrative of his day's exploits 
to write, the problem of spelling becomes a matter of 
vital concern to him. When the child, in addition, 
has become imbued with the idea of writing a note 
to some one in particular whom he regards, to one 
of his comrades, or to his mother, or to his teacher, 
the need becomes still more closely identified with 
his own personal wants and desires. Lack of con- 
trol in such a case reinvigorates the felt motivation. 
By supplying real problems to create a breakdown 
in the child's experience, because he has failed to 
master certain instruments, forms, symbols or con- 
tents, we take the most important step toward their 
acquisition or mastery. It is a basic psychological 
demand that the introduction and establishment of 
technique should be motivated by an internal im- 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 71 

pulse originating from the child's own feeling of a 
lack of facility in dealing with his varied active ex- 
periences and constructive work. But while the form 
work must thus be vitalized by intrinsic and in- 
ternal needs, nothing can bring it to a state of facile 
control except focalized reiteration. 

The assumed antithesis between the drill and inci- 
dental methods of teaching spelling should resolve 
itself therefore into a difference in the placing of 
emphasis. The advocate of the drill is inclined to 
attach paramount importance to the drill. He does 
not thereby abjure or discard the incidental method. 
He regards it as an indispensable auxiliary, a vital- 
izing supplement, which adds variety to the drill, 
which tests knowledge by the most reliable method, 
its application in concrete and real situations, and 
which thus directly indicates to the child the great 
utility of spelling as an instrument of social control. 
The supporter of the drill no more demands the 
elimination of the incidental method than he rejects 
the method of testing acquisition by its results and 
its practical employment. The incidentalist, on the 
other hand, places the emphasis on the incidental 
method. In fact, it is probably correct to say that 
the incidentalist is the more radical of the two, for 
often he does not stop with the subordination of the 
drill, but demands its complete abolition. He can 
apprehend no virtue in anything that smacks of the 
formal, or methodical, or rigid. Spontaneity and 
initiative loom so large above his mental horizon 
that he cannot apprehend the necessity of a rigid 
treatment of the hidden, underlying routine elements, 
the facile control of which makes spontaneity really 
efficacious. We believe that the facts and arguments 



72 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

presented in these pages show unequivocally that the 
position of the extreme incidentalist is untenable, 
and that the complete proscription of the drill is 
based largely on purely theoretical and sentimental 
grounds (some of the main objections were consid- 
ered in Chapter I.). 

Having established the fact of transfer, what ac- 
count can be offered in explanation? Transfer of 
acquired capacities or powers in general forces us 
to assume that mental traits are not specialized to 
an absolute extent, or else that, though specialized, 
they contain common elements. These common ele- 
ments are both physiological and psychological. On 
the physiological side, we find that our psychical 
activities are functionally connected with certain 
definite cortical areas. Particular cortical cells are 
related to highly differentiated capacities, so that 
we may have a good memory for dates or faces, 
but not for days, or principles, or classifications; 
or we may have a good memory for words seen, but 
not words heard or written. It would, therefore, 
seem that we have an innumerable number of par- 
ticular traits, but few general powers. However 
correct this account may be, there is no evidence that 
the localization is absolute, so that we have a dis- 
tinct area or neurone for every pitch, or every ad- 
jective, or every odor. Nor is there any evidence 
that the areas are discrete, independent, unrelated, 
like water tight compartments, or like the isolated 
faculties or organs of the faculty psychology or the 
phrenologist. It is highly probable that not only 
are there common elements in the various differen- 
tiated areas, but that there is an interconnection, 
intercommunication, and interdependence between 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 73 

them. Neural life is an integrated solidarity. It 
would appear, therefore, that modifications produced 
in a given area will not only spread to common ele- 
ments within that area but to the neighboring re- 
gions. If we assume that there may be an over- 
lapping of some of the areas, we need not even re- 
sort to a theory of spreading, for the overlapping 
areas (overlapping in function) would be jointly 
exercised. It is also possible that there may be 
certain regions of the nature of transfer points — 
say, certain association areas — from which the ef- 
fects irradiate. Hence if we accept as correct the 
assumption that our capacities are far more special- 
ized than generalized, still all training must general- 
ize more or less since the neural substrate con- 
sists of a network so closely interwoven as to make 
presumptively probable that the cortex will act more 
or less as a unity. In fact so closely connected are 
the neural elements that the entire nervous system is 
an integrated unity, and acts largely as such. That 
this is so is evidenced by the phenomena of reflex 
neuroses and the restitution of mental functions. A 
diseased organ or pain in a nerve will often reflect 
its disorder through the sensory and motor neurones 
to some other part of the body. Unequal visual 
acuity of the two eyes or eye strain will often mani- 
fest itself in the form of a headache ; or of gastric 
trouble, choreic symptoms, muscular twitching, epi- 
leptiform convulsions, torticollis, spinal curvature, 
paralysis, insanity, etc. ; indigestion will often mani- 
fest itself in the form of nervousness or forgetful- 
ness, and even flatfootedness will excite neuroses in 
distant portions of the body. The facts of vicarious 
functioning are equally well known. When certain 



74 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

cortical areas have been extirpated other areas will 
often gradually assume the functions temporarily 
abrogated. Cortical areas accordingly are not like 
the segregated islands of the ocean, but like the in- 
terconnecting straits. 

On the psychical side, the tendency of training to 
generalize or transfer rests upon three possibilities. 
First, that there is an identity of substance or con- 
tent in the two situations (the practised and unprac- 
tised). Thus the knowledge contents that have been 
acquired in drills on the mathematical tables and 
processes recur in physics or chemistry or quanti- 
tative experimental psychology. The power devel- 
oped in mathematical study will, accordingly, trans- 
fer to these branches, because the substance is identi- 
cal. Second, an identity of method or procedure 
(Thorndike). There are the same elements of method 
in experimental work in chemistry as in biology, 
physics, or psychology, hence the mastery of method 
in one experimental branch will transfer more or 
less to another. The same holds good in the case of 
language method. Third, there may be an identity 
of ideal or aim (Ruediger). When the child is made 
to focus attention upon neatness, industry and hon- 
esty, so that they are made conscious ideals, these 
virtues will generalize. 

In these various ways do we find it possible to 
explain how the development of specific powers will 
insure a certain measure of general training or trans- 
fer. Now, obviously, so far as spelling is concerned 
we have a perfectly clear instance of identity of sub- 
stance. The words that occur in drills are the same 
ones that occur in written discourse. There is only 
a difference of setting or of situation. To a certain 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 75 

extent the method is identical also; for while the 
incidental method is not based upon the thorough- 
going repetition involved in the drill, yet in both 
methods the forms must be more or less focalized 
in order to enter consciousness, and in both cases 
they receive more or less repeated attention. Iden- 
tity of aim can likewise be insured by consciously 
directing the child's attention in the spelling drill 
to the fact that the aim of the drill is the production 
of spelling accuracy in all written work. It is ob- 
vious that this element is also stressed when the 
drill includes dictation or writing in sentences. That 
the same cerebral areas are operative in drill work 
as in incidental spelling, is an incontestable conclu- 
sion, I believe. In the light of these considerations 
it would indeed be surprising if the spelling effi- 
ciency engendered in column drills did not directly 
transfer to connected writing. 

There is a point of practical consequence that 
should not be overlooked. Since it is not contended 
that spelling drills produce a universal generalized 
spelling proficiency which will spread to all words, 
whether they have been studied or not (nothing be- 
yond an increased facility to master new forms need 
be assumed ; in fact such increased facility for doing 
other lines of work is well attested by experiment) ; 
and since it has been shown that the ability developed 
in drills will at least transfer to situations of a dif- 
ferent nature, when the elements are similar or iden- 
tical ; it follows that the materials of the drills should 
consist of those words which are most likely to be 
used in the actual workaday experiences of the child 
and the average adult. There is slight justification 
for formal spelling drills on very unusual or hard 



76 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

words merely for the sake of the exercise or for 
the sake of developing a knack or skill for learning 
words. Contents that have intrinsic value, when 
properly taught, have just as good formal or train- 
ing value as contents of no intrinsic value whatso- 
ever. The formal value of a content is quite inde- 
pendent of whether or not it has intrinsic value ; the 
formal value depends on method and motivation. 
The practical problem then becomes one of a judici- 
ous choice of words ; and this is a problem which is 
extremely hard to solve. What words are worth 
while? Wliich will have a genuine value in the child's 
later experiences ? AVhat words have such a practical 
value that they should be learned by all? It is 
doubtful whether this question will admit of an en- 
tirely satisfactory solution because of the highly 
specialized nature of the modern professional and 
occupational environment into which the child must 
be fitted. Here, if anywhere, ''what is food to one 
is poison to another. ' ' A list of words which would 
excellently qualify a boy for efficient dictation work 
in a railway office would be of slight service in a 
physician's office. Nevertheless there are those who 
believe a minimum list of words can be made out 
whose spelling should be thoroughly mastered by 
every grammar school graduate (Chancellor pro- 
poses a list of 1000 of such words : 4). 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SPELLING DRILL IN VOGUE IN CLEVE- 
LAND AS VIEWED BY PRINCIPALS 
AND TEACHERS IN THE ELE- 
MENTARY SCHOOLS. 

In order to obtain the opinions of principals and 
teachers in the Cleveland elementary schools re- 
specting the satisfactoriness of the spelling method 
now in use, a questionnaire was addressed to the 
principals. The questionnaire asked for specific 
answers to a series of specific questions, twelve in 
number. Care was taken to emphasize the fact that 
''what is wanted in all cases is a frank, unbiased ex- 
pression of opinion," and the assurance was also 
given that the answers would be considered confi- 
dential. From the limited number of replies received 
it appears that many of the principals could not 
bring themselves to see that the writer's interest 
in the enquiry was purely scientific and that there 
was no ulterior motive. 

The circular was answered by sixteen principals 
and eight classroom teachers. The principals con- 
sulted with a considerable number of classroom 
teachers of spelling, so that the replies represent a 
larger census than sometimes appears from the tab- 
ulation. The teaching and supervising experience 
of the principals varied from thirteen to forty-two 
years, and the eight teachers directly reporting to 



78 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

me had taught from three to nineteen years, the 
majority over fourteen years. 

Nine of the respondents had never taught spelling 
by the incidental method. Fourteen had used this 
method, but never exclusively, and a number of the 
teachers interviewed had employed the method more 
or less. Eespecting the value of this method of 
teaching spelling, the opinions varied. Only two 
seemed to favor it as the sole method. Seventeen 
regarded it as a satisfactory method when combined 
with the special study of spelling. The virtues found 
in the incidental method were the following : it sup- 
plies the child with a rich and varied vocabulary of 
commonly used and comprehensible words (men- 
tioned four times) ; the context supplies a meaning 
to the words learned, and this aids the memorizing 
of the spelling (mentioned twice) ; the words fre- 
quently recur, and thus drill is provided (once) ; it 
is the most natural method of spelling, as words are 
spelled in connection with other words and in con- 
nection with manuscript writing, and this increases 
the ability to use words correctly, i. e., to use them 
in the only way in which they must be spelled in 
later life (thirteen times ^) ; it improves manuscript 
spelling (three times). Some did not regard the 
incidental method as satisfactory, on the ground that 
it is not thorough (mentioned three times), or it 
is slipshod and unmethodical (two times), or it cul- 
tivates a lack of responsibility (once), or it does 
not encourage intensive study (once), or it takes 
time from the regular subject taught (three times), 
or it gives a spelling mastery over a range of words 
that is too limited (three times). 

* These figures refer to the number of mentions. 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GKADE AND SEX. 79 

All the respondents, as well as all the teachers in- 
terviewed by the principals, are thoroughly familiar 
with the present spelling method in use in the Cleve- 
land schools, as they have followed it since it was 
introduced. Sixty-one of these approved of the 
method, while eighteen favored it to a certain extent, 
or subject to certain modifications. We may first 
consider the defects of the method, or the objections 
urged against it. The most frequent objections re- 
lated to the contests and the character of the words. 
The contests are too numerous (mentioned four 
times; they produce too much unrest (three times), 
or nerve strain (eleven times), especially during the 
contests (five times) ; they subject the schools to 
unfair comparisons, because of the difference in 
conditions in the different districts, especially with 
respect to the presence of newly arrived immigrants 
(three times); and they create the temptation on 
the part of overzealous teachers to devote more than 
the statutory time to spelling, and thus slight other 
branches (twelve times), especially in preparing 
the long list of words for the oral contests. The 
objections against the words were that they are 
too difficult, especially for the primary grades (three 
times), or for the children in foreign districts (ten 
times) ; or that there should be more than two domi- 
nant words (once), one preferring five each day, 
while one preferred more dominant words and less 
review or subordinate words. Four held that the 
general spelling was not improved; and two, that 
there is insufficient correlation with the daily written 
work. One found fault with the presence of watch- 
ers, and one with the necessity of learning the short 
sounds of vowels. 



80 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

The merits of the method were more strikingly 
emphasized. Its drill features were most frequently 
commended (mentioned seventy times). The char- 
acteristics of the drill most often emphasized were : 
the intensive study or drill of two dominant words 
each day (mentioned thirty times) ; drill in written 
work, and the writing of the dominant words in 
sentences, which develops care in spelling words cor- 
rectly in connected writing (nine times) ; the con- 
stant reviews, daily, term and annual (four times) ; 
oral drills, which aid the ear-minded children (three 
times) ; and the peculiar value which the drill on a 
limited number of dominant words has for the poor 
spellers (twelve times), in enabling them to catch 
up with the bright pupils, as it is possible to insist 
on the poorest spellers mastering the limited num- 
ber of words assigned. Another commendatory fea- 
ture was the interschool contests, which stimulate 
interest in spelling, and incite the children to do their 
best (six times). There appears therefore to be a 
division of opinion among the teachers as to the 
propriety of the contests. The method was com- 
mended furthermore because it emphasizes sylla- 
bification (ten times), and learning the vowel sounds, 
phonetic and diacritical markings (six times), all 
of which makes for correct pronunciation, distinct 
enunciation and better reading (seven times) ; it 
requires the study of the meaning of words (six 
times), it increases the child's vocabulary (six 
times), and improves his general spelling (four 
times). 

The respondents were asked to state whether any 
improvement had been observed in spelling in Cleve- 
land since the method was introduced, and also to 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 81 

estimate the amount of the increase as far as that 
could be done. Some (three) considered that the 
efficiency had been greatly increased for the words 
studied, but that the improvement in composition 
work did not measure up to expectations, one ex- 
plaining this as due to the fact that the words studied 
did not supply the needed vocabulary for the work 
required in composition. One reported that the 
gain was not great, explaining that in her school 
90% of the pupils were recent immigrants who did 
not understand the meaning of the words. All the 
others who answered the question reported a strik- 
ing increase in spelling efficiency, four stating that 
this applied to both the oral and written spelling, 
six that the improvement was marked in all lines of 
written work, and several that it was especially 
marked with the poor spellers. One principal esti- 
mated the improvement at 25% (for the words as- 
signed in the spelling lesson), two at 50% (one said 
this was true for the papers in all studies), five at 
100%, and one at from 150% to 250% (especially for 
some of the poor spellers). 

From the point of view of the majority opinion 
of the principals and teachers, it is thus apparent 
that the drill method of teaching spelling now in 
use in Cleveland is more satisfactory than any other 
method used by the respondents (three, however, 
considered that it is not). 



CHAPTER VI. 
StMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 

There are various important conclusions suggested 
by our study of spelling, which may be summarized 
in the following statements : 

1. Syllabification is an aid to spelling, pronuncia- 
tion and enunciation. It aids the child in talking 
and reading more distinctly. 

2. Interschool contests revive interest in spelling 
and vitalize the work, but they are attended by vari- 
ous dangers, and the comparisons are not always 
just measures of the relative efficiency of the work 
done in different schools, because conditions vary 
widely. They do furnish legitimate incentives and 
effective stimuli, but require careful regulation. 

3. Spelling efficiency is a function of spelling 
method, perhaps to a greater extent than it is a 
function of any other factor. Better spellers can 
be produced by the employment of a rational drill. 
There is no other specific that will rank with a good 
drill as an effective remedy for poor spelling. 

4. Two of the prime elements of a good spelling 
drill are the intensive daily focalization of con- 
sciousness upon a limited number of words, and 
attentive follow-up drills or reviews, which should 
be continued until a state of relative automatism has 
ensued. 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 83 

5. The drill should not be employed exclusively. 
Incorrect spelling should be corrected in all the 
written work, and correct spelling should be made 
a conscious ideal in all studies. Incidental teaching 
fchould therefore supplement the drill. It is needed 
to vitalize the work, and to develop the ability to use 
or apply what has been learned in actual practice. 

6. Instruction in spelling, however, should be es- 
sentially a process of teaching instead of unteaching ; 
i. e., the pupil should be given as little opportunity 
as possible to acquire incorrect spellings. Spelling 
lessons should not be confined to teaching the orthog- 
raphy of words which it has been discovered the 
child has misspelled. The correct forms should be 
anticipated, both in the incidental exercises and the 
drills. 

7. The words selected for intensive drill treat- 
ment should vary according to the character of the 
school population. The words for the average 
school are too difficult for a "steamer" school. There 
should be separate lists for foreign children, for the 
younger children, and, in the advanced classes, for 
children preparing for specialized vocations. More- 
over, it is also important to emphasize that — 

8. The words selected should be identical with the 
words in frequent use in the school and community 
environment. It is wasteful to drill on words which 
the child will probably never use. The object of 
the drill, as already explained, is not to develop a 
universal spelling efficiency. The drill develops 
specific spelling ability primarily. While this re- 
mains true, it has been shown that there is a de- 
cided tendency to generalize when the elements are 
simflar or identical in different situations, so that 



84 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

the ability to spell lists of words is available with 
a very slight loss in written compositions (Chapter 
IV.). Yet no method will develop an efficiency so 
general that it will embrace any word whatsoever. 
We must, therefore, drill primarily upon words 
which it can be foreseen the child must spell in his 
out-of-the-sehool writing. Spelling drills should 
prepare directly for life. 

9. A thorough drill is particularly valuable for 
the poor spellers (a fact apparently in harmony 
with the conclusions of Bean and Charters). 

10. Teaching spelling exclusively by a well-organ- 
ized drill gives more satisfactory results than teach- 
ing it exclusively by the incidental method. 

11. Children differ in ideational and memory type. 
Spelling should, therefore, be so taught that appeal 
will be made to a variety of mental images, particu- 
larly the visual (through the presentation of visual 
characters), the auditory (through the sounding of 
words), and motor or auditory-motor (through an- 
alytical copying or writing, whispered vocalization 
or distinct pronunciation). This conclusion is en- 
forced by several experiments (Meumann, Abbott, 
Kratz), but the pedagogy of the matter has not been 
sufficiently worked out. Meantime it is advisable 
to make a liberal rather than a limited appeal to 
various types of imagery. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. Abbott, Edwina E., On the Analysis of Memory 

Consciousness in Orthography, Studies from 
the Psychological Laboratory of the Univer- 
sity of Illinois, Vol. I, No. 1, 1909, Baltimore 
(Psychological Eeview Monograph). 

2. Bailey, Eliza E., and Manly, John M., The 

Baily-Manly Spelling Books, 2 Vols., with 
Teacher's Manual, 1908, Boston. 

3. Bean, C. Homer, Starvation and Mental Devel- 

opment, The Psychological Clinic, May 15, 
1909, Philadelphia. 

4. Chancellor, William E., Spelling, Journal of 

Education, 488, 517, 573, 607, 1910, Boston. 

5. Charters, W. W., A Spelling Hospital in the 

High School, The School Review, 192, 1910, 
Chicago. 

6. Cornman, Oliver P., Spelling in the Elementary 

School, 1902, Boston. 

7. Fracker, George Cutler. The Transference of 

Training in Memory, The Psychological Re- 
view, Monograph Supplement, Vol. IX, No. 2, 
56-102, 1908, Baltimore. 

8. Hicks, Champion Spelling Book, 1909, New 

York. 

9. Kratz, H. E., Studies and Observations in the 

School Room, 127, 1907, Boston. 



86 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 

10. Rice, J. M., The Futility of the Spelling Grind, 
The Forum, 163f, 409f, 1897, New York. 

11. Spelling in Milwaukee, Journal of Education, 
153, 270, 383, 410, 1910, Boston. 

12. Wallin, J. E. Wallace, Optical Illusions of Re- 

versible Perspective, a Volume of Historical 
and Experimental Researches, 1905, Prince- 
ton. 

13. Wallin, J. E. Wallace, Has the Drill Become 

Obsolescent. A Preliminary Discussion, Par- 
ticularly with Reference to Spelling, The 
Journal of Educational Psychology, 200, 1910, 
Baltimore. 



INDEX 



INDKX 



Abbott, 15, 84 f . 

Accelerated pupils, relation to spelling efficiency, GO f. 

Age, relation to spelling efficiency, 58 f. ; over-age, under-age, 60 f. 

Aim, identity of in transfer, 74. 

Attention, relation to habituation. 9, 17 f., 70 f., 75. 

Automatic execution, 6 f., 8, 10, 42. 

Automatization, of formal elements, 6-10, 12 ; process of, 8 f., 17 f. 

Bailey and Manly, 22, 85. 

Bean, 16, 84. 

Chancellor, 36, 38, 76, 85. 

Charters, 17, 84 f. 

Cleveland schools, spelling efficiency in, 19 f., 35 f., 80 f. ; in 
author's experiment, 26 f., 35 f. ; spelling method in, 17 f., 21, 
69, 77, 79 f. ; spelling tests in, 19 f., 26 f. 

Column spelling, see under spelling. 

Common elements in transfer, see identity of elements. 

Composition spelling, see under spelling. 

Conclusions summarized, 82 f. 

Content, mastery of, 11 f. 

Contests, 18, 79 f., 82. 

Cornman, 14 f., 36 f., 43 f., 50 f., 85. 

Correlation, 1, 69. 

Drill, as developing specializetl efficiency, 12 f., 22 f. ; effectiveness 
of, as shown by tests, 17, 19 f., 26 f., 41 ; instinctive basis of, 3 ; 
meaning of, 1 f., 5, 8 f . ; objections against, 2-6, 76 ; relation to 
forgetfulness, 43, 68 f. ; to poor spellers, 80 f., 84; to spon- 
taneity, 71. 

Drill technique, elements of, 8 f., 17 f., 22, 82; defective, 9-11; in 
relation to spelling efficiency, 17, 19 f., 22 f., 41, 43, 66 f., 82, 84; 
see jnethod. 

Facts, instrumental, 5-7. 

Forgetfulness, 42 ; in relation to column drills, 43, 68 f. ; to inci- 
dental method, 42. 

Form, mastery of, 6 f., 8, 11 f. 

Formal discipline, doctrine of, 13, 65 ; explanation of, 72 f. ; see 
transfer. 

Fracker, 66. 

Generali/.ation of acquired capacities, 14, 22, 72 f. ; universality of, 
23 f., 75, 83 ; see transfer. 

Grade, relation to spelling efficiency, 35 f., 43 f. 
Habit, disintegration of, 42: formation of, 8 f., 13, 17; in relation 
to incidental method, 11 ; individual, 11 ; elements of law of, 
9, 12, 17 f. ; racial, 10 ; avoidance of wrong, 13, 22, 83. 



90 SPELLING EFFICIENCY. 



Habituation of formal elements, G-S; see drill, 

Ilicks, 85. 

Ideal, identity of in transfer, 74. 

Ideational types in spelling, 15 f., 22, 84. 

Identity of elements in transfer of training, physiological, 72 f. ; 
psychical, 74 f. 

Incidental method. If.; as involved in drill, 12, 71 ; meaning of, 
1, 12 ; merits of, 1 f., 4, (59-71, 78 ; objections against, 5 f., 11, 
13, 16, 36, 45, 69, 78; supplementary to drill, 69, 71, 83; see 
method. 

Initial focalization in habit formation, 9, 12, 17. 

Intelligence, relation to spelling proficiency, 60 f. 

Knowledge, see testing. 

Kratz, 16, 36, 39, 84 f. 

Laggards, relation to spelling efficiency, 60 f., 80 f., 84 

Learning, natural method in spelling, 4, 79; see motivation. 

Median, 36. 

Memory, relation to sex, 56 ; to transfer, 66. 

Method, identity of in transfer, 74; see drill, incidental. 

Method in spelling, antithesis between incidental and drill, 71 ; 
incidental and drill supplementary, 69-71 ; in relation to nor- 
mal child, 45 ; to poor spellers, 60 f., 80 f., 84 ; value of, 1 f., 
15 f., 22, 39, 43, 45, 82 ; see learning, spelling. 

Meumann, 15, 84. 

Motivation, from aim, 9 ; from contents, 2, 5, 70, 76 ; from contests 
(emulation), 18, 79 f., 88; from lack of control, 70 f. ; from 
felt needs, 2, 5, 43; from intrinsic needs, 70; with formal 
materials, 75. 

Natural method, see learning. 

Need, feeling of as motive, see motivation. 

Poor spellers, see age, method in spelling. 

Practice, 8, 42 ; see drill, repetition. 

Recency, relation to spelling efficiency, 41 f., 69. 

Reflex neuroses, 73. 

Repetition, attentive, 9, 12, 18, 71, 75, 81. 

Restitution of function, 73. 

Reviews, 18, 22, 80, 82. 

Rice, 14 f., 21, 36 f., 43 f., 50, 63, 86. 

Ruediger, 74. 

Sex, relation to spelling efficiency, 49, 60, 63. 

Skill, meaning of, 6 f. 

Spelling, association and dissociation in. 68; explanation of trans- 
fer in, 75 f. ; investigations in, 14 f., 26 f., 37 f. ; as instrumental, 
5 f., S ; as social tool, 6, 8, 71 ; incorrect Initial learning, 13, 22, 
83 ; average time devoted to, 21 ; see Cleveland schools, con- 
tests, drill, incidental, method, motivation. 

Spelling efficiency in various cities, 15, 19 f., 21, 35 f., 80 f. ; mini- 
mum standard. 14 ; variation in, 15, 20 f., 40 f.. 43 f., 47 f., 57 f., 
62 f. ; in relation to age. 58 f. ; to column spelling, 2. 14, 21, 
26 f .. 55, 65 f., 69 ; to grade, 43 f., 46 f., 62 ; to intelligence, 60 f. ; 



IN RELATION TO AGE, GRADE AND SEX. 91 

to method, 15-18, 22, 43, 45; to normal, over and under-age 
pupils, 48, 60 f. ; to recency, 41 f., 69 ; to composition or sen- 
tence writing, 2, 14, 18, 22, 26 f., 54, 65 f., 69, 78, 80, 84 ; to sex, 
49 f., 60. 63 ; to personality of teacher, 14 ; to transfer, 65 f. ; 
to transfer gain and loss, 65 f. ; see Cleveland schools, drill, 
incidental. 

Substance, identity of in transfer, 74. 

Syllabification, 15, 80, 82. 

Teachers' efficiency, criterion of, 64. 

Technique, motivation of, 70 ; see drill, method, motivation. 

Testing knowledge, by application, 2, 12, 18, 70 f., 83; by verbal 
reproduction, 12, 70. 

Tests of spelling. 15-21, 26 f., 37 f. 

Test words in author's test, 31-34. 

Thoradike. 74. 

Time, devoted to spelling, 21. 

Tool facts, 5-7. 

Transfer of acquired capacities, doctrine of, 13 f., 65 : explanation 
of, 72 fit. ; gain or loss through, 65 f.. 84 ; identity of elements 
in, 24, 62 f . ; in memory experiment, 66 ; in spelling experiment, 
22 ff., 65 ff.; legitimate tests of, 23 f. ; universality of, 23 f., 
75, 83. 

Values, content, 2, 5 f., 70. 76 ; formal or training, 76 ; instrumental, 
5-7 ; intrinsic in relation to formal, 73. 

Vicarious functioning, 73. 

Variability, in relation to sex, 57, 60 ; see spelling efficiency. 

Wallin, 86. 

Words, basis of choice for drills, 75. 

Words, list used in author's test, 31-34; difficulty of, 39 f., 44; 
recency of, 41. 



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